Your agent is right 95 percent of the time per step, so why does it fail so often? Because the errors multiply.
Hook
95% Sounds Great
Your AI agent is right ninety-five percent of the time. So why does it fail most real tasks?
- Per-step accuracy: 95%
- Yet tasks still fail
Math
Steps Multiply
Because steps multiply. Ten steps, each ninety-five percent reliable, means point nine five to the tenth power.
- Success = 0.95 per step
- Ten steps in a row
Only About 60%
That is about sixty percent. Four times in ten, the agent breaks somewhere along the way.
- 0.95^10 ≈ 0.60
- 40% of runs fail
Longer Chains Collapse
Stretch it to twenty steps and success drops to about thirty-six percent. At fifty steps, under eight percent.
- 20 steps: about 36%
- 50 steps: under 8%
Why
Errors Compound
Errors also compound. One wrong step feeds bad context into every step after it.
- One bad step spreads
- Later steps inherit it
Fix
Fix One: Verify
Fix one: verify. Check each result before moving on, and catch the mistake right where it happens.
- Check every result
- Catch errors early
Fix Two: Short Loops
Fix two: keep loops short. Fewer steps between checks means less damage to undo.
- Check often
- Less to undo
Payoff
Next: The ReAct Loop
Next lesson, we build the ReAct loop, which does exactly this. Follow to keep going.
- Think, act, observe
- Follow for the next lesson