Veteran dev explains why coding agents revert their own working fixes, and the fix
RandalSchwartz · reddit · 2026-11-07
Reddit user RandalSchwartz breaks down a recurring failure mode in coding agents: after fixing the first rung of a multi-step bug, the agent sees a new downstream error, panics because it only understands binary pass/fail, and reverts its own correct fix—or loops trying variations of the same broken line.
His rule from 50 years of programming: progress means each iteration faces a different problem at a new ladder rung. He wired this into his subagent loop by locking the checkpoint when the failure moves downstream, and killing the hot context (a "Null State" reset) when two iterations stay on the same rung. The revert spirals disappeared entirely. He asks how others handle multi-step debugging ruts in agent loops.
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