BUDGETS AND RESOURCE LIMITS

KEY TERMS REVIEW Budget: a limit on how much of a resource a run may use. Token: a small chunk of text a model reads or writes. Workspace: a shared area in which several agents run. Graceful termination: stopping in a planned, tidy way. Runaway loop: a loop whose stopping condition is never reached. Exponential backoff: waiting longer after each failed attempt. Jitter: a small random addition to a wait time. CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING • Why should the harness, not the model, enforce budgets? ◦ Answer: A confused model cannot be trusted to stop itself, while harness code always applies the limit. • Why track both per-agent and per-workspace budgets? ◦ Answer: The personal meter limits one agent, and the shared meter protects the whole team if several agents overspend. • Why hold back a reserve when setting a token budget? ◦ Answer: Without a reserve there would be nothing left to write the shutdown report. • What does exponential backoff do? ◦ Answer: It waits longer after each failure so a struggling service is not overloaded. • What should an agent do after its retry limit is reached? ◦ Answer: It should change its approach or stop, not repeat the same failing call.