Lesson 1698 of 2116
Agentic AI: the failure-mode catalog every team needs
Loops, hallucinated tools, infinite retries, prompt injection, schema drift. Name them, log them, and you'll spot them in production.
Lesson map
What this lesson covers
Learning path
The main moves in order
- 1The premise
- 2failure modes
- 3observability
- 4incident patterns
Concept cluster
Terms to connect while reading
Section 1
The premise
Agent incidents fall into a small number of recurring shapes. A team that names them and logs against the names recognizes the next incident in minutes instead of days.
What AI does well here
- Emit structured logs when given a logging tool
- Follow a documented retry policy when given one
- Surface unexpected tool errors instead of swallowing them
What AI cannot do
- Recognize that it's stuck in its own loop
- Distinguish prompt injection from legitimate user input
- Diagnose its own root causes during an incident
Key terms in this lesson
End-of-lesson quiz
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