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.

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 agent

Elsewhere in the atlas

Security →Evals →Context →Coding Agents →