The Good, the Bad, and the Agentic: Node.js Backends are the new Wild West

The backend landscape has become frontier territory. AI agents are staking claims on your APIs, and the old rules don't quite apply anymore. What worked when humans were your only customers, i.e. REST endpoints, stateless design, request-response contracts, is being tested by systems that retry relentlessly, compose tools in unexpected ways, and sometimes get their instructions from untrusted sources. This talk is your field guide to the new wild west. We'll examine what's working in production systems today, the good patterns emerging from the chaos, to the bad security pitfalls that'll get you shot, and the architectural decisions that let you adapt as the dust settles in a new agentic world. You'll learn how to build Node.js backends that can handle both human and AI consumers, secure them against new threat vectors, and position your infrastructure to evolve as this frontier becomes settled land. No snake oil. Just an honest look at where we are and where the trail might lead.