AI Agents - lesson 5 | HackIndia Skills

AI Agents - lesson 5 | HackIndia Skills | HackIndia

Example

Guard the loop

This is a plain JavaScript pattern you can use even if your SDK has its own max-turn option. The idea is the same: check the budget before each model call and before each tool call.

const limits = {
  maxTurns: 8,
  maxToolCalls: 12,
  maxMs: 30000,
  maxFailures: 2
};

async function runAgent(userInput) {
  const startedAt = Date.now();
  const state = {
    turns: 0,
    toolCalls: 0,
    failures: 0,
    messages: [{ role: "user", content: userInput }]
  };

  while (true) {
    if (state.turns >= limits.maxTurns) {
      return { status: "stopped", reason: "max_turns", state };
    }
    if (state.toolCalls >= limits.maxToolCalls) {
      return { status: "stopped", reason: "max_tool_calls", state };
    }
    if (Date.now() - startedAt > limits.maxMs) {
      return { status: "stopped", reason: "timeout", state };
    }
    if (state.failures >= limits.maxFailures) {
      return { status: "stopped", reason: "too_many_failures", state };
    }

    state.turns += 1;
    const response = await callModel(state.messages);

    if (response.final) {
      return { status: "completed", answer: response.final, state };
    }

    for (const call of response.toolCalls) {
      if (state.toolCalls >= limits.maxToolCalls) {
        return { status: "stopped", reason: "max_tool_calls", state };
      }

      state.toolCalls += 1;
      try {
        const result = await executeTool(call);
        state.messages.push({ role: "tool", name: call.name, content: JSON.stringify(result) });
      } catch (err) {
        state.failures += 1;
        state.messages.push({ role: "tool", name: call.name, content: JSON.stringify({ error: err.message }) });
      }
    }
  }
}

Stop runaway agents

One safety rule

What runaway means

Set four budgets

Guard the loop

Use SDK limits too

Null is not safe

Watch concurrency

Do this now

Quick check