Proposed specificationSource-located exemplarH2

Budgeted loop with caps

Bound execution resources.

JOIN POINTresource_accounting_cycleRECORD STATUSCandidate · v0.1.0

UML class view

The proposed contract drawn as participant roles, received calls, and numbered dependencies.

Object interactions

The same roles and calls as a class collaboration and a numbered message sequence.

Object interaction diagram for Budgeted loop with caps, showing role collaboration and a numbered message sequence — FIG. P19 / OBJECT INTERACTIONS
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Pointcut

Where the mechanism applies. All four dimensions belong to the proposed match, not just its vocabulary.

Context: The harness can consume bounded turns, steps, tokens, time, or cost.
Trigger: Accounting approaches or exceeds a configured cap.
Structure: Resource ledger, cap policy, terminal reason, and optional escalation.
Effect: Execution stops or changes policy before an unaccounted resource overrun.

Protected contract

The obligation that clients, operators, and auditors should be able to rely on.

Requires: Relevant resource use is observable and shared with delegated work.
Ensures: Exhaustion produces a distinct terminal outcome and records the responsible cap.
Invariant: Budget exhaustion is never reported as task success.
Violation: Missing accounting or handler failure falls back to a safe terminal policy.

Negative control

A constant limit in an unrelated library does not meet the pointcut.

Variation & lifecycle

The hot spot is admitted only where the protected semantics survive.

Permitted variation

Step, turn, token, cost, wall-clock, delegation, and per-task budgets.

Test obligation

Test exact cap, overshoot, parallel accounting, child work, and custom handler.

Evolution question

Did simple counters evolve into typed exhaustion and recovery contracts?

Prompt + code design

An illustrative prompt and a small design sketch for the proposed contract. Names and APIs are invented; this is not a repository excerpt.

PROMPT SKETCH

Account for every bounded resource at the point of use, including delegated work. When a cap is exhausted, return a distinct terminal outcome that names the responsible budget.

CODE DESIGN / PYTHON

def before_step(budget, step):
    cost = budget.estimate(step)
    if not budget.can_spend(cost):
        raise BudgetExhausted(
            resource=budget.exhausted_resource,
            limit=budget.limit,
            spent=budget.spent,
            turn=step.turn,
        )
    budget.spend(cost)

Illustrative design sketch. A generic timeout is not a budget record; the failed cap must be attributable. This example is a teaching aid, not implementation evidence or a conformance claim.

Detection & matching

The frozen rule that retrieves this record, the canonical source exemplar, and the control that should stay unmatched.

Join point: resource_accounting_cycle
Source locator: Barbaste et al., §6.2, p. 15 (Hermes, “Budgeted Loop with Stop-Guards”); adapted label
Lexical cue: (?i)\b(?:max_(?:turns|steps|iterations)|step[_-]?limit|budget[_-]?(?:policy|limit)|token[_-]?budget)\bFrozen expression, v0.1.0. A match is a retrieval cue, not a confirmed implementation.
Aliases: None
Canonical exemplar: anomalyco/opencodepackages/core/src/session/runner/max-steps.ts:1Support: packages/core/test/session-runner.test.ts:1
Negative control: A constant limit in an unrelated library does not meet the pointcut.

Scope-anchored review. pohe-agent analyze <repo> --pattern P19 anchors the cue to its enclosing declaration and checks a separate operational signature for all four pointcut dimensions. Missing roles and negative-control risks remain visible; a structural match is not E2/E3. Calibration report ↗

Repository files

Up to five public files retrieved by the frozen cue and pinned to the audited commit. A match is a place to inspect, not a confirmed implementation.

01anomalyco/opencodepackages/core/src/session/runner/max-steps.ts:1CANONICAL SOURCE 02aaif-goose/goosecrates/goose-local-inference/src/llamacpp/inference_engine.rs:467RETRIEVAL CUE 03bytedance/deer-flowbackend/app/channels/manager.py:577RETRIEVAL CUE 04china-qijizhifeng/agentic-harness-engineeringevolve.py:4157RETRIEVAL CUE 05cline/clinesdk/packages/core/src/extensions/context/compaction-shared.ts:391RETRIEVAL CUE

Evidence & provenance

Each layer answers a different question. Do not substitute retrieval for review.

Source-located exemplar

A concrete source anchor is available for this proposed record. It is one exemplar, not evidence that all repositories—or every contract field—conform.

Review boundary: this candidate and its specification come from an AI-assisted study. Independent human validation remains open.

ANY-EVIDENCE FAMILY COVERAGE27/36

75.0% of repository families in the frozen panel have at least one current cue, historical cue, or canonical source layer. This is not confirmed prevalence.

Current lexical-cue repositories: 23 / 41

Canonical source anchoranomalyco/opencode 885df74024b6packages/core/src/session/runner/max-steps.ts:1

Supporting surfacepackages/core/test/session-runner.test.ts:1

Maximum-step terminal policy.

Exploratory retrieval cue Regex / v0.1.0

This expression is a discovery instrument only. A match is a retrieval cue—not a confirmed implementation, pointcut match, or contract proof.