Why your AI chat reconnects but your session doesn't
WebSockets are identified as the optimal protocol for production AI chat, but they face limitations at the session level. When connections drop due to various reasons, all in-flight tokens and context are lost, leading to a gap in user experience. To address this, a session layer is needed to persist conversation state and restore it upon reconnection.
- ▪WebSockets are bidirectional and persistent, making them suitable for AI chat applications.
- ▪Connection drops can occur due to proxy timeouts, page reloads, or mobile network handoffs, resulting in loss of session state.
- ▪Reconnection logic can restore the transport layer but does not recover lost tokens or context.
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try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 973510) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } Maddy Quinn for Ably Posted on May 27 • Originally published at ably.com Why your AI chat reconnects but your session doesn't #websockets #ai #architecture TL;DR: WebSockets are the right protocol for production AI chat. But the connection is stateless at the session level. When it drops — AWS ALB defaults to 60 seconds, Cloudflare to 100 seconds on Free and Pro plans — all in-flight tokens, tool call results, and agent context disappear. Reconnection logic restores the socket.
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