Preventing the Infinite Loop: Agent Safety

Agents are autonomous, which means they can be Stupid autonomously. If an agent tries to use a tool, fails, and then tries the same thing again, it can enter an Infinite Loop. This will burn your entire OpenAI budget in minutes.

1. max_iterations

This is the most important safety setting. It tells the agent: "You only have 5 attempts to solve this. If you don't find the answer, stop and report the failure."

from langchain.agents import create_openai_functions_agent, AgentExecutor

# Inside your AgentExecutor configuration:
agent_executor = AgentExecutor(
    agent=agent, 
    tools=tools, 
    max_iterations=5, # KILL SWITCH
    verbose=True
)

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2. Global Timeouts

Sometimes an iteration doesn't "Loop," but the tool takes 5 minutes to respond (e.g., a slow database query). You should set a Maximum Execution Time.

agent_executor = AgentExecutor(
    ...
    max_execution_time=60 # Stop after 60 seconds no matter what
)

---

3. Visualizing a Loop Failure

graph TD
    Start[User: 'Solve Paradox'] --> A[Agent Try 1]
    A -->|Fails| B[Agent Try 2]
    B -->|Fails| C[Agent Try 3]
    C -->|Fails| D[Agent Try 4]
    D -->|Fails| E[Agent Try 5]
    E -->|STOP| User[Output: 'I could not solve this in 5 steps']

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4. The "Last Attempt" Prompt

What happens when the agent hits the max_iterations limit? By default, it just stops. In LangChain, you can configure it to Summarize what it tried so far.

• "I tried searching Wikipedia and Google, but both results were empty. I apologize, I cannot find the answer."

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5. Engineering Tip: Human-in-the-Loop

For high-stakes tasks (like deleting a file or sending a payment), don't let the agent be 100% autonomous. Add a "Approval" step where the agent must wait for a human to click "Yes" before the tool executes. (This is covered in depth in the Agentic Course).

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Key Takeaways

• max_iterations prevents expensive infinite loops.
• max_execution_time prevents hanging processes.
• Verbose mode is essential for seeing why a loop is happening.
• Agents should always have a Kill Switch.