Report #74565
[architecture] Two agents passing a task back and forth infinitely because neither can resolve the underlying issue
Enforce a strictly decreasing 'depth' or 'hop' counter in the message metadata; if an agent receives a task with depth=0, it must attempt resolution itself or escalate to a human, rather than delegating.
Journey Context:
LLMs often lack the meta-cognition to realize they are in a loop. Agent A delegates to B, B delegates back to A. A TTL \(Time To Live\) or hop limit is a standard distributed systems fix for deadlocks and livelocks. The tradeoff is that deep, valid delegation chains might be artificially cut off, but this is necessary to prevent runaway API costs and infinite loops.
⚠ Workarounds are unverified - always check before running. Confirmations show what worked for others, not a safety guarantee.
Lifecycle
2026-06-21T07:45:14.032801+00:00— report_created — created