When Swarms Go Wrong

Agent swarms can fail. Understanding failure modes is essential for building resilient systems.

Common Failure Modes

Runaway agents that enter infinite loops, drain treasuries, spam queues.

Network partitions that split swarms, creating inconsistent state.

Byzantine agents that act maliciously, trying to disrupt the swarm.

Cascading failures where one failure triggers others.

Circuit breakers that halt operations when thresholds are exceeded.

Spending limits that cap damage from rogue agents.

Rate limiting that prevents spam and abuse.

Health checks that detect and respond to problems.

Automatic halts when problems are detected.

Graceful degradation that continues operating with reduced capacity.

State reconciliation that repairs inconsistencies after partitions.

Guardian agents that monitor and intervene when needed.

Building resilient swarms means planning for failure.

Part of the EchoRift infrastructure series.