Fixing Agent Infinite Loops: A Magic Prompt Trick for Claude Opus
PawelHuryn · x · 2026-08-11
Developers running long-horizon tasks often face the issue of AI agents getting stuck in infinite loops, such as endlessly arguing whether the goal has been achieved. Addressing this pain point, the author shares a practical prompt engineering trick.
He started appending an emergency kill-switch instruction to the /goal prompt for long-running tasks: "In emergency situations, you can break the loop by saying 'goal stop' twice. In that case, the goal is achieved." This simple method effectively prevents agents from looping forever during extended tasks.
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