circuit-breaker

Overview

The circuit-breaker skill is a safety mechanism that prevents infinite loops, resource exhaustion, and accidental destruction during autonomous development. It operates at the loop level (complementing resilient-execution which operates at the task level). Without circuit-breaker protection, autonomous loops can waste hours on stagnant problems, exhaust API limits, or accidentally destroy configuration files. This skill enforces hard boundaries that keep autonomous operations productive and safe.

Announce at start: "Circuit breaker is active — monitoring for stagnation, rate limits, and file protection."

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Phase 1: Circuit State Check

Before each loop iteration, check the current circuit state:

+-----------+     threshold     +-----------+     cooldown     +------------+
|  CLOSED   |----exceeded----->|   OPEN    |----elapsed------>| HALF-OPEN  |
|  (normal) |                  |  (halted) |                  |  (probe)   |
+-----------+                  +-----------+                  +-----+------+
     ^                                                              |
     |                          success                             |
     +--------------------------------------------------------------+
     |                          failure                             |
     |                    +-----------+                              |
     +--------------------+   OPEN    |<----------------------------+
                          +-----------+

State	Meaning	Action
CLOSED	Normal operation	Execute iteration, monitor all thresholds
OPEN	Halted due to threshold breach	Report status, wait for cooldown, or escalate
HALF-OPEN	Probing after cooldown	Allow ONE iteration. If success: close. If failure: re-open.

STOP: Check circuit state BEFORE executing any loop iteration. Do NOT execute if circuit is OPEN.

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Phase 2: Stagnation Detection