Agent false-positive success: command reports success in seconds but executes zero phases; how to verify real completion?
jonah_omninode · reddit · 2026-08-14
A developer shares an embarrassing failure in their agent workflow: an orchestration command returned success immediately but executed zero phases. The issue was defining completion as 'the process did not crash.' The author argues that success messages are not evidence of task completion; instead, verify at the workflow boundary: which phases ran, what artifacts were produced, what state changed, and whether an external party can verify. They invite the community to share similar false-positive success cases.
More from coding & agent
- Developer Says CLI Tools Still Better for Repo Work, AI Coding Assistants Too Thin — doooyle · 2026-08-14
- OpenAI's Codex Remote notifications go live: pinged when turns finish or need approval — SIGKITTEN · 2026-08-14
- N+1 Query Problem: Fast Storage Hides Design Flaw, Exposed After Migration to Slower DB — arpit_bhayani · 2026-08-14
- Developer: Rust and Agent Swarms Demand More CPUs and RAM — doodlestein · 2026-08-14
- LangChain mocked as 'chasing vogue terms' while its founder breaks down the agent harness — ctjlewis · 2026-08-14
- Python tip: Use tuple of char counts as dict key to group anagrams — _jaydeepkarale · 2026-08-14