@cirsteve

The advice flipped from "prompt the agent" to "write the loop." Right, but it stops at the word loop. The loop is five lines. done() is the whole job. Coding agents got away with dumb while-true loops because tests hand you done() for free: green or red. Point the same loop at research or extraction and the free checkmark is gone. A model doesn't finish, it stops emitting, and "stopped" isn't "done." So you start patching: result + 3 tool calls in one turn, a provider 500 then a 401, a model that never converges and burns budget forever. Every case is a decision the loop doesn't make, so you make it ad hoc until you've built a state machine by accident, badly. The loop is trivial. The state machine of named exits is the product. https://www.rankonelabs.com/blog/the_hard_part_is_done

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