Before adding another agent, define what makes the workflow stop
XxFreakhawkxX · reddit · 2026-11-11
A Reddit user shares hands-on lessons for multi-agent workflows: decide what 'done' means before wiring in the next agent, or planner/executor/reviewer loops will pass the same unfinished task around until the budget is gone.
Key points:
- Write the completion rule first: e.g. for a code change — requested behavior implemented, specified tests pass, diff stays within allowed files; the reviewer should point to a failed check, not just ask for 'better'
- Separate limits: cap model calls, tool retries, elapsed time, and spend independently; hitting a limit must yield an explicit incomplete result with the last useful output — never silently restart or present unfinished work as success
- Keep handoffs small: pass task, constraints, current artifact, and the reason for the next step; resending all earlier messages bloats input and obscures which instruction controls the current action
- Trace everything: log who called which tool, what returned, which check failed, and why another step was allowed — use it to distinguish transient tool errors from cycles with no route to completion
- Moving to a serverless inference API removes model-serving work but supplies none of these app-level stopping rules; once the workflow is bounded, evaluate providers on completed tasks, retries, elapsed time, and total usage
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