Making Software as Durable as Data with Peter Kraft from DBOS

Most workflow and orchestration tools rely on external systems and fragile state management, making it hard for applications, especially AI agents to recover from failures or long running interruptions.

In this episode, David talks with Peter Kraft, co-founder of DBOS, about a new approach to durable execution. DBOS is a lightweight, database-backed library that checkpoints program state so applications can resume after crashes, upgrades, or API failures. Originating from Stanford research with Matei Zaharia and Michael Stonebraker, the idea is to make software as durable as data by storing application state in the database.

Peter walks through what makes DBOS unique: the ability to run in-process while still giving you the durability, distribution, and observability you'd expect from a dedicated orchestration layer. The two also explore how AI agents will create new reliability challenges and why CockroachDB is a natural fit.