Why Eval++ Is the Next Great Compute Primitive — Sunil Pai & Matt Carey, Cloudflare

By ai.engineer

Categories: AI, Tools

Summary

Cloudflare's Durable Objects enable 'stateful serverless' computing—a paradigm shift for AI agents that combines the scalability of functions with persistent state, achieving sub-16ms latency globally. This compute primitive is production-ready for tool calls, resumability, and background scheduling at scale.

Key Takeaways

  1. Durable Objects solve the stateless function problem by spinning up once per ID and maintaining state across all future requests, eliminating database round-trips for agents that need persistent memory—critical for long-running AI workflows.
  2. 15ms latency on Cloudflare's planetary network matches 60 FPS refresh rates (16ms), enabling real-time multi-device synchronization for collaborative AI agent interfaces—demonstrated by TLDraw's perfect sync across phones.
  3. Cloudflare Agents framework provides full-stack AI SDKs with React hooks, MCP support, and first-class Vercel AI SDK backend integration—reducing production deployment complexity for tool calling and cross-tab resumability.
  4. Scheduling primitive enables autonomous background tasks (e.g., 'every Friday at 9pm, compile Git history and wiki updates')—unlocking asynchronous AI agent workflows without requiring external job queues.
  5. Durable Objects are 'vendor lock-in' by design but enable capabilities (addressability, hibernation, persistence, background execution) unavailable in traditional serverless, making them ideal as the fundamental compute primitive for multi-agent systems.

Related topics

Transcript Excerpt

Oh, yeah. Well, uh welcome. Um uh I'm Matt and this is Sunil. Um we work on agents at Cloudflare. This this thing. Um so, yeah, maybe you want to introduce yourself a little better than me. Uh this is Matt Carey. Uh I only hire my friends for our team. Uh say something. Make sure it's on the microphone. >> Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Mine's Is mine on? Like I keep thinking about Cloudflare as a friends and family company. Uh we love doing favors. All our closest friends, no one pays for Cloudflare bills, which is already dirt cheap, by the way. It's ridiculous. Um so, we started building out AI agents seriously a little over a year ago and it's gone remarkably well. Uh how many folks here are like orange peeled? Which is to say durable objects. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Worst named technology, but inc…

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