Five agent steps became fifty after a change. What happens?
Practice this question- A strict step/time/token budget stops the run and reports a supported fallback.
- I inspect progress and repeated calls, compare prompt/tool changes, and track long-tail cost rather than allowing an expensive loop to continue.
Adapted from 13_AI.MD · “29.17 Cost optimization”. Code examples are study fragments. Difficulty and core labels are editorial estimates; version-specific behavior should be checked against your project.