How to Fix AI Agent Not Responding

Symptom 1: Infinite Loop

Cause: No exit condition. Fix: Add in system prompt "If you have called same tool 2x with same args, stop and ask human." Add max_iterations=8 in code.

Symptom 2: Tool Error "Invalid JSON"

Cause: LLM output not matching schema. Fix: Give 2 examples of correct JSON in tool description. Set temperature 0.

Symptom 3: Silent Timeout

Cause: Long context → slow. Fix: Summarize history every 5 steps. Trim tool observations to 500 chars.

Symptom 4: Hallucinated Success

Agent says "Done" but didn't do. Fix: Require observation verification - after send_email tool, tool must return message ID, agent must quote it.

Checklist

• Check API key quota
• Check logs / traces
• Reduce to 1 tool, test
• Increase timeout to 60s