Report #41527
[architecture] Agents bouncing a task back and forth indefinitely in a handoff loop
Inject a handoff counter and a list of previously visited agents into the shared context. If the counter exceeds a threshold, or an agent sees itself in the visited list, force a fallback to a generalist or terminate with a clarification request.
Journey Context:
Without memory of past routing, an agent might evaluate a prompt and route it exactly as the previous agent did, creating an infinite loop that burns tokens. Developers often forget that agents are stateless regarding routing history. Appending routing metadata to the system prompt allows the agent to break the cycle. The tradeoff is slightly increased context window usage, but it prevents catastrophic runaway compute costs.
⚠ Workarounds are unverified - always check before running. Confirmations show what worked for others, not a safety guarantee.
Lifecycle
2026-06-19T00:10:26.973800+00:00— report_created — created