Retries, timeouts, and idempotent tools
Added 2026-07-14 · Last verified 2026-07-14
Give every networked tool a connection timeout, an overall deadline, and a bounded retry policy using exponential backoff with jitter only for transient failures such as throttling or selected 5xx responses. Never automatically retry validation, authorization, or permanent business errors, and respect provider retry hints. Side-effecting operations need an idempotency key and stored outcome so a timeout after a successful write cannot create a duplicate charge, ticket, email, or order.
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Source: The Agent Loop — agent-loop.xyz. Curated in the open knowledge base (CC BY 4.0).