Summary
Agents fail in specific, reproducible ways. Understanding the failure modes is a prerequisite to shipping one. The most common causes: bad tool descriptions, unbounded iteration, poorly-structured state, and evaluation debt.
Objectives
- 01List the five most common agent failure modes.
- 02Diagnose which failure a specific incident represents.
- 03Design mitigations for each.
The Lesson
The list
Tool selection errors (bad descriptions). Infinite loops (unbounded iteration). Context bloat (state not summarized). Silent failures (tools that swallow errors). Eval debt (no way to measure regression). Every production agent will hit each of these; anticipate them.
Key Ideas
- Bound iteration. Log everything. Evaluate constantly.