Drift over time
Long runs lose the thread.
- Is a
- Failure kind
- Guarded by
- Fresh starts
- Grows with
- Compounding failure
Long runs lose the thread. Cursor says that after running agents for long stretches "we still need periodic fresh starts to combat drift and tunnel vision" (Cursor, Scaling long-running autonomous coding). Software that stays in service ages, and a planned restart was found cost-effective at AT&T Bell Labs (Wikipedia, Software aging).
Guard: fresh starts. It grows with run length, as does compounding failure.