# Fresh starts

Restart the agent when a condition is met, not on a calendar.

**Is a:** [Guard](/reference/ontology/unattended-agent-failures/guard)

Cursor: "we still need periodic fresh starts to combat drift and tunnel vision" ([Cursor, Scaling long-running autonomous coding](https://cursor.com/blog/scaling-agents)). A planned restart was found cost-effective at AT&T Bell Labs ([Wikipedia, Software aging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_aging)).

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Published 2026-10-29. Web page: https://www.mackenziebowes.com/reference/ontology/unattended-agent-failures/fresh-starts