Austin Zhang

State management has traditionally focused on synchronizing user interactions, frontend state, and backend persistence. But AI agents introduce a new type of actor into modern applications: autonomous workflows that can read, execute, and modify application state alongside human users.In this session, we explore how familiar frontend state management concepts can evolve into shared full-stack architectures where both humans and AI agents collaborate on the same data model. Using examples from modern React applications, we will examine sandboxed agent execution with forked state snapshots, deterministic merge strategies, concurrent updates between users and agents, and techniques for making agent actions observable and debuggable.Rather than treating AI as an external API call, this talk presents agents as first-class participants in application state transitions. We will extend familiar concepts such as state stores, reducers, event streams, and optimistic updates beyond the frontend into backend orchestration systems that keep human and agent state consistent.Attendees will leave with practical architectural patterns for building collaborative human + AI applications using ideas they already know from modern frontend development.