Agent Runtime

Memory, tools, and the cost of a loop

Lena Voss

Agents are not products. They are runtimes. Voss treats tool calling, memory, and retries as systems problems with bills attached, and shows how to keep a loop from becoming a furnace.

12 pages389 words$22

Back to catalog

Opening

A loop is a server

An agent is a server that happens to call a model. Treat it like one. It has a request, a budget, a timeout, side effects, and logs you will need when it does something expensive and wrong.

The loop is: observe, choose a tool or a stop, act, observe again. Every iteration costs tokens, latency, and a chance to mutate the world. If you cannot cap the iterations, you do not have an agent. You have a while-true with a credit card.