Files
langgraph/libs/checkpoint-postgres
9abee46990 feat(langgraph): DeltaChannel snapshot_frequency — bounded read depth with write-count snapshotting (#7634)
## Summary

Builds on #7586. Adds `snapshot_frequency: int | None` to
`DeltaChannel`, letting users trade storage for bounded read depth. Also
promotes `channels/_delta.py` from private to public
(`channels/delta.py`).

### How it works

Every Nth **pregel step**, `create_checkpoint` writes a `_DeltaSnapshot`
blob instead of `DELTA_SENTINEL`. The ancestor walk in
`_get_channel_writes_history` terminates at the snapshot rather than
walking the full chain, bounding replay to at most N steps.

Snapshots are **eager**: fired even on steps where the channel had no
write (via a `get_next_version` version bump), so the depth bound holds
unconditionally — no risk of the cadence drifting if a channel happens
to be silent at a snapshot step.

### Storage formula

| Mode | Blob storage | Read depth |
|------|-------------|------------|
| `snapshot_frequency=None` (pure delta) | O(N) — sentinels only | O(N)
steps |
| `snapshot_frequency=K` | O(N²/K) — periodic snapshots of growing size
| O(K) steps |
| add_messages / BinOp | O(N²) — full blob every step | O(1) |

At N turns with ~400 char/msg messages, total snapshot storage ≈ N²/(2K)
× avg_msg_size, since each snapshot blob grows linearly with accumulated
messages.

### Key design decisions

- **Step-based**: `snapshot_frequency=K` means "snapshot every K pregel
steps." `create_checkpoint` has the step number; the channel itself
doesn't need to track writes.
- **Eager**: version-bumped via `get_next_version` even on non-write
steps so `put()` always stores the blob.
- **`_DeltaSnapshot` NamedTuple + msgpack ext type**
(`EXT_DELTA_SNAPSHOT = 7`): serde type tag dispatches in
`from_checkpoint` — no dict key inspection, no collision risk.
- **`from_checkpoint` semantics**: `_DeltaSnapshot` → restore value
directly (no replay needed); `DELTA_SENTINEL` / `MISSING` → replay from
ancestor writes; plain value → pre-migration BinOp blob.
- **InMemorySaver and PostgresSaver updated**:
`_get_channel_writes_history` collects the snapshot ancestor's
pending_writes before terminating (they encode the *next* step's
transition, unlike pre-delta migration blobs which subsume their own
writes).
- **`snapshot_frequency=None`** is the pure-delta default (replaces
`math.inf`).

### Benchmark results (InMemory, ~400 char/msg)

**Storage**

| turns | ctx | freq=1 | freq=5 | freq=10 | freq=50 | freq=inf |
|------:|----:|-------:|-------:|--------:|--------:|---------:|
| 50 | ~10K tok | 5.9 MB | 1.2 MB | 601.3 KB | 119.8 KB | 29.5 KB |
| 100 | ~20K tok | 23.7 MB | 4.8 MB | 2.4 MB | 475.8 KB | 58.4 KB |
| 200 | ~40K tok | 94.6 MB | 19.0 MB | 9.5 MB | 1.9 MB | 116.4 KB |
| 500 | ~100K tok | 591.5 MB | 118.4 MB | 59.2 MB | 11.8 MB | 290.3 KB |

**Read latency** (avg of 5 `get_state` calls)

| turns | ctx | freq=1 | freq=5 | freq=10 | freq=50 | freq=inf |
|------:|----:|-------:|-------:|--------:|--------:|---------:|
| 50 | ~10K tok | 0.4ms | 0.4ms | 0.7ms | 0.9ms | 1.8ms |
| 100 | ~20K tok | 0.7ms | 0.9ms | 1.0ms | 1.7ms | 5.7ms |
| 200 | ~40K tok | 1.5ms | 1.7ms | 4.5ms | 3.7ms | 20.1ms |
| 500 | ~100K tok | 3.6ms | 4.2ms | 4.4ms | 9.0ms | 110.3ms |

**Per-invoke write latency**

| turns | ctx | freq=1 | freq=5 | freq=10 | freq=50 | freq=inf |
|------:|----:|-------:|-------:|--------:|--------:|---------:|
| 50 | ~10K tok | 1.5ms | 1.1ms | 1.1ms | 1.3ms | 1.7ms |
| 100 | ~20K tok | 2.5ms | 1.6ms | 1.5ms | 1.7ms | 3.3ms |
| 200 | ~40K tok | 3.4ms | 2.3ms | 2.2ms | 2.5ms | 8.3ms |
| 500 | ~100K tok | 6.2ms | 4.2ms | 3.6ms | 4.1ms | 39.2ms |

## Test plan

- [x] `make format` / `make lint` clean across `langgraph`,
`checkpoint`, `checkpoint-postgres`
- [x] `tests/test_channels.py` — 37 passing including step-based and
eager-snapshot tests
- [x] `tests/test_delta_channel_migration.py` — all passing
- [x] Full suite: 1387 passing, 6 pre-existing failures unrelated to
this branch

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-28 16:42:48 -04:00
..

LangGraph Checkpoint Postgres

Implementation of LangGraph CheckpointSaver that uses Postgres.

Dependencies

By default langgraph-checkpoint-postgres installs psycopg (Psycopg 3) without any extras. However, you can choose a specific installation that best suits your needs here (for example, psycopg[binary]).

Security

Important

Set LANGGRAPH_STRICT_MSGPACK=true or pass an explicit allowed_msgpack_modules list when creating your checkpointer. This restricts checkpoint deserialization to known-safe types, preventing code execution if the database is compromised. See the langgraph-checkpoint README for details.

Usage

Important

When using Postgres checkpointers for the first time, make sure to call .setup() method on them to create required tables. See example below.

Important

When manually creating Postgres connections and passing them to PostgresSaver or AsyncPostgresSaver, make sure to include autocommit=True and row_factory=dict_row (from psycopg.rows import dict_row). See a full example in this how-to guide.

Why these parameters are required:

  • autocommit=True: Required for the .setup() method to properly commit the checkpoint tables to the database. Without this, table creation may not be persisted.
  • row_factory=dict_row: Required because the PostgresSaver implementation accesses database rows using dictionary-style syntax (e.g., row["column_name"]). The default tuple_row factory returns tuples that only support index-based access (e.g., row[0]), which will cause TypeError exceptions when the checkpointer tries to access columns by name.

Example of incorrect usage:

# ❌ This will fail with TypeError during checkpointer operations
with psycopg.connect(DB_URI) as conn:  # Missing autocommit=True and row_factory=dict_row
    checkpointer = PostgresSaver(conn)
    checkpointer.setup()  # May not persist tables properly
    # Any operation that reads from database will fail with:
    # TypeError: tuple indices must be integers or slices, not str
from langgraph.checkpoint.postgres import PostgresSaver

write_config = {"configurable": {"thread_id": "1", "checkpoint_ns": ""}}
read_config = {"configurable": {"thread_id": "1"}}

DB_URI = "postgres://postgres:postgres@localhost:5432/postgres?sslmode=disable"
with PostgresSaver.from_conn_string(DB_URI) as checkpointer:
    # call .setup() the first time you're using the checkpointer
    checkpointer.setup()
    checkpoint = {
        "v": 4,
        "ts": "2024-07-31T20:14:19.804150+00:00",
        "id": "1ef4f797-8335-6428-8001-8a1503f9b875",
        "channel_values": {
            "my_key": "meow",
            "node": "node"
        },
        "channel_versions": {
            "__start__": 2,
            "my_key": 3,
            "start:node": 3,
            "node": 3
        },
        "versions_seen": {
            "__input__": {},
            "__start__": {
            "__start__": 1
            },
            "node": {
            "start:node": 2
            }
        },
    }

    # store checkpoint
    checkpointer.put(write_config, checkpoint, {}, {})

    # load checkpoint
    checkpointer.get(read_config)

    # list checkpoints
    list(checkpointer.list(read_config))

Async

from langgraph.checkpoint.postgres.aio import AsyncPostgresSaver

async with AsyncPostgresSaver.from_conn_string(DB_URI) as checkpointer:
    checkpoint = {
        "v": 4,
        "ts": "2024-07-31T20:14:19.804150+00:00",
        "id": "1ef4f797-8335-6428-8001-8a1503f9b875",
        "channel_values": {
            "my_key": "meow",
            "node": "node"
        },
        "channel_versions": {
            "__start__": 2,
            "my_key": 3,
            "start:node": 3,
            "node": 3
        },
        "versions_seen": {
            "__input__": {},
            "__start__": {
            "__start__": 1
            },
            "node": {
            "start:node": 2
            }
        },
    }

    # store checkpoint
    await checkpointer.aput(write_config, checkpoint, {}, {})

    # load checkpoint
    await checkpointer.aget(read_config)

    # list checkpoints
    [c async for c in checkpointer.alist(read_config)]