Versioning and Rollbacks for Agents

Why versioning matters

Agents are made of soft components: prompts, tool definitions, model choices, and configuration. A small change to any of them can make the agent more helpful or completely broken. Without versioning, you may not know what changed or how to undo it.

What to version

• Prompts. Every system, task, and few-shot prompt should be versioned.
• Tool schemas. Changes to tool inputs or outputs affect parsing and validation.
• Model selections. Model updates can change behavior even if prompts stay the same.
• Configuration. Temperature, max tokens, retry policies, and routing rules.
• Dependencies. Framework and provider library versions.

How to implement rollbacks

1. Store agent artifacts in version control or a versioned store.
2. Deploy with immutable versions; do not edit production in place.
3. Keep the previous version running or ready to hot-swap.
4. Define rollback criteria: error rate threshold, latency spike, or user complaint signal.
5. Practice a rollback so it takes seconds, not hours.

Rollback checklist

• Can you identify the last known good version quickly?
• Can you restore it without downtime?
• Do you have a way to compare behavior between versions?
• Is there a decision log of who changed what and why?
• Are model or provider updates gated by evaluation results?

Related

• Monitoring and Auditing Agents
• Agent Safety Checklist