langgraph-checkpoint-cosmosdb

Azure CosmosDB checkpoint saver for LangGraph. Persists agent state between runs so your graphs can resume from any prior checkpoint.

What makes this checkpointer different: it has message history pruning built in. Pass a MessageReducer and the checkpointer automatically caps your message list before writing to CosmosDB — no extra code in your graph, no state annotation changes required. This is the only LangGraph CosmosDB checkpointer with this capability.

Features

• Full checkpoint persistence — save, retrieve, and list LangGraph checkpoints in CosmosDB
• Built-in message pruning — optional MessageReducer prunes message history at the persistence layer, keeping checkpoints lean without changing your graph code
• Sync and async API — put/get_tuple/list and their aput/aget_tuple/alist async counterparts
• Subgraph support — correctly checkpoints parent and subgraph state independently
• Flexible authentication — key-based or Azure RBAC (Managed Identity, az login, service principal)
• Auto-creates database and container — when using key-based auth

Installation

pip install langgraph-checkpoint-cosmosdb

With optional message pruning support:

pip install "langgraph-checkpoint-cosmosdb[reducer]"

Requires Python 3.10+

Database and Container Setup

Key-based is the easiest way to get started — just point the saver at an existing CosmosDB account and it will provision everything.

RBAC is recommended for production. Because the saver only calls get_database_client / get_container_client (no write permissions needed at setup time), the database and container must already be provisioned before the saver is initialised. Create them via the Azure portal, Terraform, Bicep, or the Azure CLI:

az cosmosdb sql database create --account-name <account> --name <db>
az cosmosdb sql container create \
  --account-name <account> --database-name <db> --name <container> \
  --partition-key-path "/partition_key"

Important: The partition key path must be /partition_key regardless of how the container is created.

Authentication

Key-based (development / admin access)

export COSMOSDB_ENDPOINT="https://<account>.documents.azure.com:443/"
export COSMOSDB_KEY="<your-key>"

Azure RBAC / Managed Identity (production)

Set only the endpoint — no key. The saver uses DefaultAzureCredential, which resolves in this order: environment service principal → managed identity → az login.

export COSMOSDB_ENDPOINT="https://<account>.documents.azure.com:443/"
# COSMOSDB_KEY not set → DefaultAzureCredential is used

For user-assigned managed identity:

export AZURE_CLIENT_ID="<managed-identity-client-id>"

For service principal:

export AZURE_TENANT_ID="<tenant-id>"
export AZURE_CLIENT_ID="<client-id>"
export AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET="<client-secret>"

Quick Start

from langgraph.graph import StateGraph, MessagesState, START
from langchain_openai import ChatOpenAI
from langgraph_checkpoint_cosmosdb import CosmosDBSaver

model = ChatOpenAI(model="gpt-4o-mini")

def call_model(state: MessagesState):
    return {"messages": model.invoke(state["messages"])}

builder = StateGraph(MessagesState)
builder.add_node("call_model", call_model)
builder.add_edge(START, "call_model")

checkpointer = CosmosDBSaver(database_name="mydb", container_name="checkpoints")
graph = builder.compile(checkpointer=checkpointer)

config = {"configurable": {"thread_id": "user-123"}}

# First run — state is saved to CosmosDB
graph.invoke({"messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hi, I'm Kamal"}]}, config)

# Second run — picks up where it left off
graph.invoke({"messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "What's my name?"}]}, config)

API Reference

CosmosDBSaver(database_name, container_name, reducer=None, messages_key="messages")

Sync methods

Async methods

All sync methods have async counterparts: aput, aput_writes, aget_tuple, alist, and adelete.

# Async usage
checkpoint = await saver.aget_tuple(config)
await saver.adelete(thread_id="user-123", checkpoint_namespace="", checkpoint_id="<id>")

list usage

# List all checkpoints for a thread (newest first)
for cp in saver.list(config={"configurable": {"thread_id": "user-123"}}):
    print(cp.checkpoint["id"], cp.metadata)

# Limit results
for cp in saver.list(config, limit=5):
    print(cp)

Limitation: list only supports filtering by thread_id. The filter parameter (filtering by metadata) is not yet implemented.

Subgraph Support

Works transparently with LangGraph subgraphs — parent and subgraph checkpoints are stored under the same container using namespaced partition keys:

from langgraph.graph import StateGraph, START
from langgraph_checkpoint_cosmosdb import CosmosDBSaver
from typing import TypedDict

class SubState(TypedDict):
    foo: str
    bar: str

class State(TypedDict):
    foo: str

# ... build parent + subgraph as normal ...
checkpointer = CosmosDBSaver(database_name="mydb", container_name="checkpoints")
graph = parent_builder.compile(checkpointer=checkpointer)

for _, chunk in graph.stream({"foo": "hello"}, config, subgraphs=True):
    print(chunk)

Built-in Message Pruning

Long-running agents accumulate message history with every turn. Left unchecked this inflates checkpoint size, increases CosmosDB storage costs, and eventually blows past LLM context limits.

This checkpointer solves that at the persistence layer: pass a MessageReducer and it automatically prunes the message list inside put() before the checkpoint is serialised and written to CosmosDB. Your graph code, state definition, and node logic stay untouched.

This is an alternative to — or complement of — the LangGraph Annotated[list, reducer_fn] pattern. Use the checkpoint-layer approach when:

• You don't own the graph or state definition (e.g. using a pre-built LangGraph agent)
• You want pruning to happen unconditionally at every save, regardless of which node triggered it
• You want to keep all in-memory state intact and only prune what gets persisted

Install with reducer support

pip install "langgraph-checkpoint-cosmosdb[reducer]"

Usage

from agentstate_reducer import MessageReducer
from langgraph_checkpoint_cosmosdb import CosmosDBSaver

reducer = MessageReducer(min_messages=10, max_messages=20)

checkpointer = CosmosDBSaver(
    database_name="mydb",
    container_name="checkpoints",
    reducer=reducer,        # prune before each checkpoint save
    messages_key="messages" # state channel holding the message list (default)
)

When len(messages) > max_messages, the oldest human/ai messages are removed until min_messages remain. The following are never pruned:

• Index 0 (typically the system prompt) — controlled by preserve_first=True
• system and function messages
• tool messages — unless their parent ai message is pruned (cascade behaviour, configurable)

See agentstate-reducer on PyPI for full configuration: preserve_first, cascade_tool_messages, summarize_fn, and role alias support (user/assistant/agent).

Usage — long-term memory via on_prune (agentstate-reducer >= 0.4.0)

Messages pruned from the checkpoint are exactly the ones leaving the model's view. The saver forwards a memory namespace to the reducer, and any on_prune hook receives (pruned_messages, namespace) — so pruned turns can flow straight into a LangGraph BaseStore (or LangMem, or any memory engine) with no extra node and no package coupling:

from uuid import uuid4
from agentstate_reducer import MessageReducer, ReducerConfig, Background
from langgraph_checkpoint_cosmosdb import CosmosDBSaver

store = ...  # any langgraph BaseStore

def remember(pruned, namespace):
    for m in pruned:
        store.put(tuple(namespace), key=str(uuid4()), value={"role": m.type, "content": m.content})

reducer = MessageReducer(config=ReducerConfig(max_messages=20, on_prune=[remember]))
# on_prune=[Background(remember)] runs a slow hook (e.g. LLM extraction) off the request path
saver = CosmosDBSaver(database_name="mydb", container_name="checkpoints", reducer=reducer)
graph = builder.compile(checkpointer=saver, store=store)

graph.invoke(input, config={"configurable": {
    "thread_id": uuid4().hex,                    # short-term scope (this checkpoint)
    "memory_namespace": ("memories", user_id),   # long-term scope (the store)
}})

The saver reads memory_namespace (or whatever ReducerConfig.namespace_key names) from config["configurable"] on every put() and passes it through untouched. If the app never sets it, the namespace falls back to ("memories", thread_id). Each pruned message reaches the hooks once, even though LangGraph writes several checkpoints per turn.

Data Model

Checkpoints and writes are stored as separate items in the same CosmosDB container, differentiated by a key prefix and partition key:

The container requires a partition key path of /partition_key.

License

MIT