Reference-grade guide for AI engineers building autonomous and tool-using agents — the plan→act→observe loop and its failure physics, the five budgets every agent must set (iteration, tool-call, token, wall-clock, cost), termination and no-progress detection, runaway prevention (circuit breakers, ki
Reference-grade guide for AI engineers building autonomous and tool-using agents — the plan→act→observe loop and its failure physics, the five budgets every agent must set (iteration, tool-call, token, wall-clock, cost), termination and no-progress detection, runaway prevention (circuit breakers, kill switch), the three guardrail layers (input/output/action), verify-before-acting, bounded sub-agen