FA-99916 / Agent workflow termination / Open access

Workflow: budget exhaustion is reported as successful completion · case 01

A run with no remaining work is labeled completed despite having no final answer.

Verified by executionVariant 1 · 7 checks per implementationDownload source bundle ↓JSON ↗

ROOT CAUSE

The finish reason is inferred from an empty queue alone.

THE FAILURE

The finish reason is inferred from an empty queue alone.

Unsuccessful approach: Prioritizing the budget label misclassifies a run that did produce its final answer.

Case contract

Given final_seen and remaining_steps, return complete when final_seen, budget_exhausted when steps are zero, else continue.

Why this case matters

This toy decision rule isolates one bounded agent-loop completion contract.

1 / The failure

Exit 1

"""Failure Map reference implementation. Python standard library only."""
import json

N = 1
observations = []
def solve(final_seen, remaining_steps):
    return 'complete' if remaining_steps == 0 else 'continue'
def check(label, actual, expected):
    observations.append({"check": label, "actual": actual, "expected": expected, "passed": actual == expected})
check('final at exhausted budget', solve(True,0),'complete')
check('budget without final', solve(False,0),'budget_exhausted')
check('active without final', solve(False,N),'continue')
check('final with room', solve(True,N),'complete')
check('positive step', solve(False,1),'continue')
check('extra budget without final', solve(False,N+1),'continue')
check('answer wins', solve(True,1),'complete')
print(json.dumps({"observations": observations, "passed": all(x["passed"] for x in observations)}, ensure_ascii=False))
raise SystemExit(0 if all(x["passed"] for x in observations) else 1)

Boundary fixture	Actual	Expected	Outcome
final at exhausted budget	`complete`	`complete`	Passed
budget without final	`complete`	`budget_exhausted`	Failed
active without final	`continue`	`continue`	Passed
final with room	`continue`	`complete`	Failed
positive step	`continue`	`continue`	Passed
extra budget without final	`continue`	`continue`	Passed
answer wins	`continue`	`complete`	Failed

SHA-256 / 6be80ec96f0ce5eef881462f8ed672fc083c2b44d41cfda28a6d0594e1459290

2 / The unsuccessful fix

Exit 1

"""Failure Map reference implementation. Python standard library only."""
import json

N = 1
observations = []
def solve(final_seen, remaining_steps):
    return 'budget_exhausted' if remaining_steps == 0 else ('complete' if final_seen else 'continue')
def check(label, actual, expected):
    observations.append({"check": label, "actual": actual, "expected": expected, "passed": actual == expected})
check('final at exhausted budget', solve(True,0),'complete')
check('budget without final', solve(False,0),'budget_exhausted')
check('active without final', solve(False,N),'continue')
check('final with room', solve(True,N),'complete')
check('positive step', solve(False,1),'continue')
check('extra budget without final', solve(False,N+1),'continue')
check('answer wins', solve(True,1),'complete')
print(json.dumps({"observations": observations, "passed": all(x["passed"] for x in observations)}, ensure_ascii=False))
raise SystemExit(0 if all(x["passed"] for x in observations) else 1)

Boundary fixture	Actual	Expected	Outcome
final at exhausted budget	`budget_exhausted`	`complete`	Failed
budget without final	`budget_exhausted`	`budget_exhausted`	Passed
active without final	`continue`	`continue`	Passed
final with room	`complete`	`complete`	Passed
positive step	`continue`	`continue`	Passed
extra budget without final	`continue`	`continue`	Passed
answer wins	`complete`	`complete`	Passed

SHA-256 / d7fe2651f870976e495ad73777b0cf6dde1a2d101b297f91a0d7b120cac26b1d

HELD IN THE MEMBER ARCHIVE

The verified repair and its recorded checks are member-only.

This mechanism has 7 recorded checks per implementation. The open-access tier publishes the failure and the unsuccessful fix; the repaired source that passes every check, and the observations that prove it, are available to members.

Every case sharing this mechanism uses the same contract and the same repair, so this one record is held back for all of them.

Member access is invitation-based. Sign in with your invited account to inspect the repair.

Verification & scope

remaining_steps is nonnegative; failure and cancellation reasons are outside this precedence rule. This reproducer isolates one failure mechanism. Results cover the supplied fixtures. Variants within a family share a test contract and should remain grouped when constructing evaluation splits. Related mechanisms with a shared evaluation_group must also remain together; these controlled models are not independent production incidents.

Observations recorded using Python 3.12.14 at 2026-09-30T16:48:29.449039+00:00.

Case digest / 5afa2c118f2ee54768e6025c3bace123cdaf4452805fc938b2bc72359b4c3048