Every loop needs a brake

An unwatched loop doesn't converge — it spends. A loop without a stop is a bill, and occasionally an outage. Fit the brakes before the first turn:

• Success criteria — the checks that mean done, decided up front.
• Budget — tokens, minutes, dollars: whichever runs out first.
• Max iterations — a hard ceiling, always.
• No-progress detection — the same error twice means change strategy or escalate, never "again, but harder."

The rule of the realm: never start a loop you haven't decided how to stop.