Detecting stuck agent loops with call fingerprints and a sliding window
Prudent-Amphibian453 · reddit · 2026-07-20
The author describes a practical way to detect autonomous-agent doom loops in tool use:
- fingerprint each call as toolname + hash(arguments)
- keep a sliding FIFO window of the last 20 calls
- detect short repeating cycles of length 1–3 when they repeat three times
- escalate gradually: first a gentle nudge, second a stronger warning, third stop the turn
They note that this catches only byte-identical loops, not semantic no-progress loops where arguments vary but the agent still goes nowhere. The post asks for better approaches, such as embedding-based similarity, progress/state-delta tracking, LLM judges, or per-subtask budgets.
Related event: Catching Agent Infinite Loops: Fingerprint & Sliding Window(6 posts)→
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