Circuit Breaker

What is a circuit breaker?

Your home's breaker trips when too much current flows, protecting the whole circuit. A circuit breaker in an agent system works the same way: when it detects an agent repeatedly erroring, timing out or acting up, it "cuts the power" — pausing or severing execution so the fault can't spread.

How does it work?

Closed state
Everything's fine; the agent runs normally.
Open state
Error count or failure rate passes a threshold, the breaker trips, and further calls are blocked right away.
Half-open state
After a cooldown, it lets a few trial requests through. Success restores it; failure keeps the circuit open.

Why it beats manual handling

Failures spread in an instant. By the time an engineer sees the alert, logs in and starts digging, the damage may already be done. A breaker reacts in milliseconds — it's the system's first line of self-healing.

How it pairs with a kill switch

A breaker is automatic and local — it usually cuts a specific tool or sub-flow. A kill switch is manual and global — it shuts down the whole agent. Normally the breaker auto-stops first, and the kill switch is the last resort when things still spiral.

Bottom line: a circuit breaker gives an agent an automatic trip switch.