> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://vietbui.mintlify.site/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Error Budget (Agentic) > SRE error budget concept adapted to autonomous agent loops. The budget defines how much failure — in retries, cost, runtime, or error rate — is tolerable bef… # Error Budget (Agentic) SRE error budget concept adapted to autonomous agent loops. The budget defines how much failure — in retries, cost, runtime, or error rate — is tolerable before the system must stop, narrow its capabilities, or roll back. Without a budget, self-healing loops run indefinitely. *** ## SRE Origin **Error budget** (GitLab/Google SRE definition): the acceptable amount of unreliability over a time window, derived from the Service Level Objective (SLO). ``` error_budget = 1 - SLO_target Example: SLO = 99.9% → error_budget = 0.1% of requests may fail per month ``` When budget is exhausted: freeze feature releases until reliability recovers. The budget is a shared contract between engineering and the business on how much downtime is acceptable. *** ## Agentic Adaptation In agent loops, "unreliability" maps to multiple resource axes simultaneously: | Budget type | What it measures | Exhaustion action | | --------------------- | -------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- | | **Retry budget** | Attempts per failure type | Stop retrying → rollback | | **Token budget** | LLM tokens consumed per task | Escalate → don't continue spending | | **Runtime budget** | Wall-clock time per session | Timeout → checkpoint → stop | | **Error rate budget** | Failure rate over rolling window | Rollback staging → halt deploy | | **Session budget** | Total autonomous iterations | Human review before continuing | An agent loop without budget definitions can spend unbounded resources on a task it cannot solve, accumulating debt (bad code, flaky fixes, wasted compute) while reporting "still working." *** ## Budget Policy Rules **Rule 1: Define budget before starting, not during failure** Budget values must be set in config, not chosen adaptively by the agent. An agent under pressure will rationalize higher budgets. **Rule 2: Budget exhaustion stops, not pauses** When any budget is exhausted: stop, rollback if applicable, write incident note. Do not "just try one more time." **Rule 3: No progress = budget consumption** If the agent makes N attempts with identical failure signatures and zero test improvement, that is budget exhausted regardless of remaining retry count. Signature-based detection catches this without counting. **Rule 4: Token/time exhaustion escalates, not loops** If the agent consumes its token or runtime budget without completing: checkpoint state, stop cleanly, flag for human. Looping on a budget-exhausted task is the failure mode, not the fix. *** ## Reference Budget Defaults (Starting Point) Calibrate these per project; these are conservative starting values: ```yaml theme={null} budgets: retry_per_failure: 3 # max attempts before rollback per distinct failure retry_total_per_session: 10 # total retry attempts across all failures in one session token_per_task: 50000 # LLM tokens per discrete task (not per session) runtime_per_task: 1800 # seconds (30 min) per task; wall-clock staging_error_rate: 0.01 # 1% of synthetic checks may fail before rollback triggered session_iterations: 20 # total ralph-loop iterations before requiring human check-in ``` *** ## Budget as Rollback Trigger Error budget integrates with [Self-Healing Loop](/concepts/self-healing-loop) rollback conditions: ``` staging deploy → health monitor starts every 30s: check /health + run 1 synthetic test error_rate = failures / total_checks if error_rate > staging_error_rate budget: rollback to last known-good image write incident note set ESCALATE=1 stop if agent retry_count > retry_per_failure budget: same action ``` The budget threshold replaces "wait and see" with a machine-enforceable condition. The health monitor runs independently of the agent — agent cannot suppress or override it. *** ## Detecting No-Progress Without Budget When an agent loops on the same failure with different patches but no improvement, retry count alone doesn't catch it: ```python theme={null} progress_score = (passing_tests_now - passing_tests_before_repair) / total_tests if progress_score <= 0 and retry_count >= 2: # Agent is not making progress — escalate even if budget remains trigger_rollback() ``` This is the "spending without improving" detector: progress score of 0 across two retries = budget exhausted regardless of counter. *** ## Budget vs Retry Count These are related but distinct: | Concept | Scope | What it prevents | | -------------- | ----------------------------- | -------------------------------------- | | Retry count | Per failure event | Infinite loops on one broken thing | | Error budget | Across the session/deployment | Accumulated failure across many events | | Progress score | Per repair attempt | Retrying useless fixes | All three are needed. Retry count alone doesn't stop an agent that tries 100 different fixes on 100 different things, each failing once. Budget covers the aggregate; progress score covers the per-attempt signal. *** ## Related Pages * [Self-Healing Loop](/concepts/self-healing-loop) — the retry/rollback/escalation pattern budgets govern * [Agentic CI/CD](/concepts/agentic-cicd) — where error rate budgets are monitored (staging health) * [Ralph Loop](/concepts/ralph-loop) — the outer loop that session budgets constrain * [Verification Pipeline](/concepts/verification-pipeline) — what passes/fails that feeds the error rate