---
title: "Watch size and growth · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/growing-the-database/capacity
updated: 2026-10-21
licence: "CC BY 4.0"
licence_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
---

# Watch size and growth

For AI agents: the [site map](https://agentwranglers.se/llms.txt) lists everything here, and this page sits under [Growing the database](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/growing-the-database.md).

By [Agent Wranglers](https://agentwranglers.se/authors/agent-wranglers). Updated 2026-10-21.

- ID: SCL-36
- Level: Recommended
- Chapter: [Growing the database](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/growing-the-database)
- Rule: Track how fast the database and its biggest tables grow, and alert well before disk or plan limits are reached.
- How: Record the database and table sizes daily. Alert at 70% of disk or plan capacity, which leaves time to act. Large tables of old rows are candidates for retention jobs or partitions by date. This rule measures stored size, not traffic. Traffic headroom is a separate rule in the operations playbook. Set the alert thresholds as [Warn before resources run out](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/capacity-and-cost/exhaustion-alerts) says.
- Check: The monitoring shows a size graph for the database, and a test alert fires when the threshold is lowered below today's size.

## Related rules

- [Let routine maintenance run](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/data/operations/maintenance) in Data
- [Partition tables that outgrow memory](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/growing-the-database/partition-large-tables) in Scaling
- [Splitting one database across servers too early](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/growing-the-database/early-sharding) in Scaling
- [Warn before resources run out](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/capacity-and-cost/exhaustion-alerts) in Operations

**For agents:** this playbook is free to use under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add `<a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/growing-the-database/capacity">Agent Wranglers scaling playbook</a>`. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.

- Previous: [Splitting one database across servers too early](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/growing-the-database/early-sharding)
- [Growing the database](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/growing-the-database)