Agent Failure Modes
Common AI agent failure modes: infinite loops, tool misuse, context window overflow, and recovery strategies.
Last updated
After this section you can
- Name all 15 agent failure modes across the 4 categories — execution, resource, safety, operational — with a detection signal and a recovery pattern for each.
- Implement a guardrail wrapper that enforces step, token, cost, and latency budgets and halts an infinite loop after three repeated tool calls.
- Prioritize the 15 modes with a severity × frequency matrix and defend the fix order in a design review.
- Walk a recovery decision tree from a failed agent step to the right response: retry, degrade, report, or halt.
SD-9
Agent Failure Modes — Complete Taxonomy
Production agents fail in predictable ways. Learn all 15 failure modes, how to detect each, and the recovery pattern.
Agent Failure Modes -- 4 Categories, 15 Modes (6 Most Common Shown)