AI Systems Atlas

H-15Budgets & Stopping Rules

/harnesses/budgets-and-stopping

Step, token and wall-clock ceilings bound the loop — and a stopping rule names why it ended.

Step-by-step walkthrough8 steps
  1. The task enters the loop.
  2. One iteration runs — but the harness, not the model, decides whether there is another.
  3. Three independent ceilings: steps bound thrash, tokens bound cost, wall clock bounds the user’s patience.
  4. All three still have room, so the loop continues.
  5. Iterations keep going and every counter climbs.
  6. One ceiling hits. That ends the run, whatever state the model is in.
  7. A stopping rule classifies the ending: solved, out of budget, or blocked and asking for help.
  8. The run returns its best state and why it stopped — a silent halt is unusable.
Key insight

The harness, not the model, decides whether there is another iteration. Every other plate in this collection assumes something eventually says stop; this is that something.

Failure mode

A silent halt. An agent that stops without reporting whether it solved the task, ran out of budget, or gave up is indistinguishable from one that crashed.

Further reading
RelatedReAct loopRetry loopLong-running agentDenial of walletThinking budgetsCost monitoring

Elsewhere in the atlas

Security →Evals →Context →Coding Agents →Tools →Ops →