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This page covers runtime errors you may encounter when running Guild agents and how to resolve them.

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Synchronous infinite loops and step budgets

If an agent runs too many synchronous steps in a tight loop without yielding — for example, a while (true) loop with no await or async operations — the runtime triggers a circuit breaker to prevent an out-of-memory crash. By default, the runtime limits consecutive budget refreshes to 10, which corresponds to 10,000 synchronous steps without yielding.

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Error message and stack trace

When the limit is exceeded, execution stops with a UserError: 
Your agent ran too many synchronous steps without yielding (10000+ steps) and had to be stopped.
When stopped, the agent was here:
  at scope(2) step=1 { items=["x","x","x",...] }
  at scope(1) { _input={"text":"trigger"}, _task={...} }
Because compiled state machines do not retain original function names in their runtime frames, the trace shows compiled scope IDs and snapshots of local variables:
  • scope(N) — the scope level in the compiled output.
  • { variable=value } — a snapshot of local variables in that scope when execution stopped. Use this to identify which variables are growing or where the loop is stuck.

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Configuring the limit

If your agent performs legitimate heavy synchronous processing and requires a higher budget, you can raise the cap:
  • Environment variable: Set GUILD_MAX_BUDGET_REFRESHES to a higher integer. See Environment variables.
  • Runtime knob: Set runtime.agent.max_budget_refreshes. See Runtime knobs.