AI Agents Without Stop Policies Become Infinite Loops: Three Gates for Production
ArtComprehensive7403 · reddit · 2026-07-30
The author points out that most AI agent architectures stop at plan → act → observe. However, in real production environments, the hardest part is deciding when the system has enough evidence to continue, retry, stop, or hand control back to a human.
To make this decision concrete, the article outlines three essential gates for production:
- Evidence threshold: What proves the task is actually complete?
- Retry budget: How much failure is allowed before stopping?
- Impact gate: Can the next action be safely reversed?
The author emphasizes that while memory preserves context, it shouldn't be treated as proof of success. Finally, they ask the community which failure mode is most common in real agent systems: endless retries, confident completion without evidence, or escalating to humans too often.
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