Why AI Agents Need Evidence Before They Retry

A support agent authorized to generate one refund sends the request but loses the connection. The agent receives no confirmation of success and attempts to send the refund again. If the original request was successful, then the agent’s repeat action may result in a second refund. This is purely hypothetical. The example represents a problem that cannot be solved by model accuracy alone.

What actions should an agent take if it cannot determine whether its previous action changed the state of the environment? Unite.AI has explored agent reliability beyond models. Recovery issues deserve their own rules in those discussions. An agent should confirm what occurred, or have a valid guarantee against duplicate effects, before attempting a consequential action for a second time.

An unreturned response does not establish that an action has failed. It does not indicate whether an error occurred before execution, whether the action completed without acknowledgement, or whether the process is ongoing. This is a common issue in distributed systems, as described by Amazon. Amazon explains why retry mechanisms need specific safeguards against repeated side effects.

Agents…