# Escalating to a Human — Agent Loops, Stop Conditions and Token Budgets

Source: https://www.geekswithgeeks.com/en/agent-loops/end-escalation

> Hand over cleanly with the evidence a person needs to continue.

## A handover note

Some stops need a person: repeated failures, ambiguous goals, or risky actions. A good handover includes the **goal**, **what was tried**, **the last error**, **the current state** and **a suggested next step**. Without that, the human has to re-read the whole transcript.

## A structured handover

A fixed structure makes handovers easy to read and to route automatically, for example into a ticket.

```json
{
  "status": "needs_human",
  "reason": "3 consecutive tool failures",
  "goal": "Migrate users table to the new schema",
  "tried": ["ran migration 0042", "retried with --fake-initial"],
  "last_error": "permission denied for table users",
  "state": { "step": 7, "tokens_used": 63000 },
  "suggested_next": "Grant ALTER on users to the migration role, then resume"
}
```

**Quiz:** What makes a handover note most useful?

- [ ] Only the words "please help"
- [x] Goal, what was tried, last error, state and a suggested next step
- [ ] The complete raw transcript
- [ ] A random log line

*Answer:* Goal, what was tried, last error, state and a suggested next step. A structured summary lets a person act without reconstructing the history.