AgentsAdvanced

The Agent That Wouldn't Stop

Your research agent occasionally runs for 40+ minutes and costs $15 per run before timing out. The agent keeps calling the same tool with slightly different arguments. Diagnose and fix.

Symptoms

Mean run: 90 seconds. P99 run: 40+ minutes.
Cost spikes — some runs cost $15+
Agent calls search() 20+ times with paraphrased queries
Final answer is still wrong

Evidence

Agent trace (excerpt)

Step 1: search('latest RAG techniques')
Step 2: search('new RAG methods 2025')
Step 3: search('retrieval augmented generation advances')
Step 4: search('RAG research papers recent')
...
Step 24: search('RAG innovation 2025 Q1')
Step 25: final answer (timeout)

System prompt

You are a research agent. Be thorough. Do not stop until you have comprehensive information.

Tool config

max_iterations: not set
timeout: 45min (global)
cost_budget: not set

Tasks

1Identify why the agent loops
2Design guardrails to prevent it
3Improve the prompt to avoid the behaviour

Your diagnosis