Autonomous Agent Occasionally Enters Question Explained
This worked AI Engineer Interview practice question tests Reliability and Safety. Try the answer first, then review why D is the best choice.
Short answer
The correct answer is D. Hard per-run budgets on steps, tokens, and spend, enforced outside the agent, with explicit termination states..
Containment must be enforced by the harness, not requested from the model — an agent in a bad state is precisely the one that won't follow its own stop instructions. The key is to match the exact action in the prompt to the tool, command, or concept that performs that action directly. Here, D. Hard per-run budgets on steps, tokens, and spend, enforced outside the agent, with explicit termination states. is the only option that satisfies the scenario without adding unrelated behavior.
The Question
An autonomous agent occasionally enters a loop, re-invoking tools until someone kills the process. Which control is the load-bearing one?
Why D is correct
Containment must be enforced by the harness, not requested from the model — an agent in a bad state is precisely the one that won't follow its own stop instructions. The key is to match the exact action in the prompt to the tool, command, or concept that performs that action directly. Here, D. Hard per-run budgets on steps, tokens, and spend, enforced outside the agent, with explicit termination states. is the only option that satisfies the scenario without adding unrelated behavior.
Why the other options are wrong
Option A does not match the requirement in the prompt. The correct answer is D because Containment must be enforced by the harness, not requested from the model — an agent in a bad state is precisely the one that won't follow its own stop instructions.
Option B does not match the requirement in the prompt. The correct answer is D because Containment must be enforced by the harness, not requested from the model — an agent in a bad state is precisely the one that won't follow its own stop instructions.
Option C does not match the requirement in the prompt. The correct answer is D because Containment must be enforced by the harness, not requested from the model — an agent in a bad state is precisely the one that won't follow its own stop instructions.
Key idea: Reliability and Safety
Every question is a production situation an AI engineer interviewer can put to you: a failing endpoint, a cost spike, an agent that loops, an eval that disagrees with users. The best answer is almost always the one that measures or contains the problem before it changes the model or the prompt. If you miss a question, note which habit it tests: decompose before you fix, put the security boundary where the side effect happens, and trust an eval only after you check what it covers. The 12 open-ended questions with answer guides are at aijobprep.app/questions/ai-engineer.html.
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