Agent Basics
Core concepts, the agent loop, foundations for newcomers.
24 posts · showing 1–10
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One Big update_task Tool or Three Small Ones? Your To-Do Agent Only Sees the Names and Descriptions
A to-do agent archived a task you meant to finish, and the tool was working fine. The model picks tools from a short menu of names and descriptions, so how you split that menu decides how often it picks wrong.
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Your Scheduling Agent Moved One Meeting and Said "Done." Teach the Loop What Finished Looks Like.
An agent loop ends when the model stops asking for tools, not when your task is finished. Here is why that gap produces confident half-done work, and a small done-check that closes it.
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The Agent Said It Booked the Meeting. Learn to Read One Turn: Text, Tool Call, Tool Result, and Which One Counts
An agent's reply can describe an action it never took. Once you can tell the three kinds of message in a transcript apart, you will know in ten seconds whether the calendar invite exists.
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Your Agent Called the Same Tool Three Times in a Row. Here's What the Loop Is Telling You.
A repeating agent isn't being stubborn — it's being consistent. Identical tool calls mean the context barely changed between turns, and there are only four reasons that happens.
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Agent or Just a Script? Count the Branches That Depend on Reading Something
There is a ten-minute test that settles whether your automation needs an agent loop or just a script with a couple of model calls in the middle — and the two ways of guessing wrong are not equally recoverable.
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Who Decides the Agent Is Done? Three Stop Conditions, and Why "The Model Said So" Isn't One
Most first agents end their loop when the model stops calling tools — which means the model, not you, decides what "done" means. Here are the three stop conditions a real loop needs, and the twenty lines that turn a silent wrong answer into another iteration.
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Four Tool Calls to One Answer: A Research Run, Annotated
A research agent answers one question in four steps. Reading what changed in the transcript between each step explains more about how agents work than any diagram of the loop.
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Choosing Your First Three Tools
Find, read, finish. The third one is the one people leave out, and it's the one that turns "the agent stopped talking" into something you can actually check.
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Agent Vocabulary: What the Terms Actually Mean
People discussing the same word are frequently discussing different things. Four of the distinctions are load-bearing — and when an agent conversation isn't converging, it's usually one of them.
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Working With an Agent as a Pair, Not a Vending Machine
Describe, wait, review, repeat — the mode most people start in and the one that hits a ceiling fastest. The difference is fifteen seconds spent on what you know that isn't written down.