Anti-Patterns

Infinite Debate

Anti-pattern: launch multi-agent debate without a termination rule and watch the agents loop forever.

Problem

Without a termination rule, debate converges only by accident; far more often the agents keep finding new angles to disagree on, restate prior positions, or politely circle the same point indefinitely. Token cost and latency grow linearly with rounds while real progress on the answer stalls, and the loop ends only when an outer cost limiter or a timeout intervenes. The team is left with an expensive run, no decision, and no clean way to tell whether two more rounds would have helped.

Solution

Don't. Add a round cap and a termination predicate. Pair debate with a judge or aggregator. See debate, step-budget, the-stop-hook.

When to use

  • Never use this; multi-agent debate without a termination rule loops indefinitely.
  • Use debate together with a round cap and an explicit termination predicate.
  • Pair debate with a judge or aggregator (see debate, step-budget, the-stop-hook).

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