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’s init — store it on the agent state so handlers can reuse it:

import { z } from 'zod';
import { defineAgent, method, acquireQuotaToken } from '@golemcloud/golem-ts-sdk';
 
export const ApiAgent = defineAgent({
  name: 'ApiAgent',
  id: { name: z.string() },
  methods: {
    call: method({ input: {}, returns: z.string() }),
  },
});
 
export const ApiAgentImpl = ApiAgent.implement({
  init: () => ({ token: acquireQuotaToken('api-calls', 1n) }),
  methods: {
    async call() {
      // this.token is the QuotaToken acquired in init
      // ...
      return 'ok';
    },
  },
});

The second parameter to acquireQuotaToken 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:

token.reserve(amount) returns a Result<Reservation, FailedReservation>. Inspect it with .isOk() / .isErr() and read the value with .unwrap() / .unwrapErr():

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

6. Splitting Tokens for Agent-to-Agent RPC

Split a portion of your quota to pass to a child agent. Call the other agent through its definition client (see golem-call-another-agent-ts), passing the child token as an input:

import { QuotaToken } from '@golemcloud/golem-ts-sdk';
 
const childToken: QuotaToken = this.token.split(200n);
const summarizer = SummarizerAgent.client.get({ name: 'sum-1' });
const summary = await summarizer.summarize({ text, token: childToken });

The child agent declares the token input with the s.quotaToken() schema marker and uses it for its own reservations:

import { z } from 'zod';
import { method, s } from '@golemcloud/golem-ts-sdk';
 
summarize: method({ input: { text: z.string(), token: s.quotaToken() }, returns: z.string() }),

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