Eternal Loop
Nothing changed. Let’s try again.
The Eternal Loop is an agent that responds to failure with persistence instead of judgment. The task failed, the error says why, and the loop runs again with the same plan, the same tool, and the same hope. Overnight it can hold a conversation with a payment API that consists entirely of the same request, declined.
Symptom
Retry counts in the thousands. Identical failures spaced sixty seconds apart. Nobody home, because the run was classified as 'in progress' at quitting time.
Why It Matters
Retries are for transient faults. The Eternal Loop applies them to permanent ones, converting a one-dollar mistake into an unbounded one the moment someone stops watching the meter.
What the Chapter Gives You
The stopping rules that separate retry from obsession, how to cap attempts and spend per task, and the alert that fires before the loop meets the payment API.
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