Frame agents as loops with checks
People often hear agent and imagine a little worker with judgment. A clearer frame is a controller. It reads state, chooses one next step, takes an allowed action, checks the result, then decides whether to continue or stop.
The loop must have boundaries: what the agent may read, which tools it may call, when it must ask for PLATPHORM_API_KEY, and which check ends the run. Without those boundaries, a loop can amplify the first wrong assumption.
The AHA is that autonomy is not the absence of control. Good autonomy is visible control repeated safely.
Aha moment
The check step is what separates an agent loop from a repeated confident guess.
Try this
Rewrite one one-shot AI answer as observe, decide, act, check, reflect, and require a visible artifact for every step.
Watch for
- Loops with no stop condition
- Reflection that never changes the next action
- Retry logic that repeats the same failing move