AI Agent Frameworks / Scenario

The Chat That Would Not Die

An AutoGen pair burns 50 turns because nobody's termination check matches what the model actually says. Cheap bug, expensive invoice.

Difficulty
Medium
Format
Scenario
Points
150
Estimate
12 min

// MISSION BRIEF

Your Mission

A nightly AutoGen job (assistant + user proxy running the test suite via a registered tool) sometimes completes in 6 turns, sometimes burns all 50 and gets force-stopped. Finance noticed before engineering did.

Read the configuration and the transcript, find why termination fails, and design the tests that keep conversations mortal.

// FIRST CONTACT

Battle teaser

First artifact

nightly_fixer.py

Why did the conversation never terminate on its own?

  1. AAutoGen ignores is_termination_msg when tools are registered
  2. BThe assistant never tried to terminate
  3. Cis_termination_msg uses exact equality against "TERMINATE", but the model emits surrounding text ("... TERMINATE." with prose and punctuation), so the predicate never matches and the loop runs to the cap
  4. Dmax_consecutive_auto_reply=50 disables termination checks
Answers, scoring, hints, and the full battle stay sealed.

// SKILL TAGS

autogenterminationtool-usemulti-agentai-agents