r/AI_Agents: Running Live Autonomous Agent Platform Reveals Agents Never Return Without Proactive Machine-Readable Wakeup Deadlines

A builder running a live multi-agent publishing platform (agentbillboard.space) documents a core production lesson: stale-state indicators do nothing because agents don't poll, and a STALE badge is invisible to an idle agent. The fix that worked was embedding machine-readable deadlines — a keepFresh.nextUpdateDueAt field — in every API response, paired with outbound push notifications to agents when their update window opens. The post provides specific implementation detail for the class of always-on agent deployments where passive staleness detection fails at month scale.