Adding Resource Quotas to an Agent (TypeScript)

Golem provides a distributed resource quota system via @golemcloud/golem-ts-sdk. Quotas let you define limited resources (API call rates, storage capacity, connection concurrency) and enforce consumption limits across all agents in a deployment.

1. Define Resources in the Application Manifest

Add resource definitions under resourceDefaults in golem.yaml, scoped per environment:

resourceDefaults:
  prod:
    api-calls:
      limit:
        type: Rate
        value: 100
        period: minute
        max: 1000
      enforcementAction: reject
      unit: request
      units: requests
    storage:
      limit:
        type: Capacity
        value: 1073741824  # 1 GB
      enforcementAction: reject
      unit: byte
      units: bytes
    connections:
      limit:
        type: Concurrency
        value: 50
      enforcementAction: throttle
      unit: connection
      units: connections

Limit Types

• Rate — refills value tokens every period (second/minute/hour/day), capped at max. Use for rate-limiting API calls.
• Capacity — fixed pool of value tokens. Once consumed, never refilled. Use for storage budgets.
• Concurrency — pool of value tokens returned when released. Use for limiting parallel connections.

Enforcement Actions

• reject — returns an error with an optional estimated wait time. The agent must handle the error.
• throttle — Golem suspends the agent until capacity is available. Fully automatic, no code needed.
• terminate — kills the agent with a failure message.

2. Acquire a QuotaToken

Acquire a QuotaToken once per resource, typically in the agent constructor:

import { acquireQuotaToken } from "@golemcloud/golem-ts-sdk";
 
const token = acquireQuotaToken("api-calls", 1n);

The second parameter is the expected amount per reservation (bigint), used for fair scheduling. For simple 1-call = 1-token rate limiting, use 1n.

3. Simple Rate Limiting with withReservation

Use withReservation to reserve tokens, run code, and commit actual usage:

import { withReservation } from "@golemcloud/golem-ts-sdk";
 
const result = await withReservation(token, 1n, async (reservation) => {
  const response = await callSimpleApi();
  return { used: BigInt(1), value: response };
});

The callback returns { used, value }. If used < reserved, unused capacity returns to the pool.

4. Variable-Cost Reservations (e.g., LLM Tokens)

Reserve the maximum expected cost, then commit actual usage:

const result = await withReservation(token, 4000n, async (reservation) => {
  const response = await callLlm(prompt, { maxTokens: 4000 });
  return { used: BigInt(response.tokensUsed), value: response };
});

5. Manual Reserve / Commit

For finer control, use reserve and commit directly:

const reservationResult = token.reserve(100n);
if (reservationResult.ok) {
  const reservation = reservationResult.value;
  const result = doWork();
  reservation.commit(BigInt(result.actualUsage));
} else {
  console.warn("Quota unavailable:", reservationResult.error);
}

6. Splitting Tokens for Agent-to-Agent RPC

Split a portion of your quota to pass to a child agent:

const childToken: QuotaToken = token.split(200n);
const childAgent = await SummarizerAgent.newPhantom();
const summary = childAgent.summarize(text, childToken);

The child agent receives the QuotaToken as a method parameter and uses it for its own reservations. Merge returned tokens back:

token.merge(returnedToken);

7. Dynamic Resource Updates via CLI

Modify resource limits at runtime — changes affect running agents immediately:

golem resource update api-calls --limit '{"type":"rate","value":200,"period":"minute","max":2000}' --environment prod

Key Constraints

• Acquire QuotaToken once and reuse — do not create a new one per call
• All quota amounts are bigint values (use 1n, 200n, etc.)
• split traps if childExpectedUse exceeds the parent’s current expected-use
• merge traps if the tokens refer to different resources
• withReservation throws only for reject enforcement — throttle suspends transparently
• Resource names in code must match the names in golem.yaml resourceDefaults