We run several Claude Code sessions every day on one project, and the cheapest fix we found was not a bigger limit. It was two habits, written down once as a skill:

1. Brief the agent like a colleague, not a command

Before launching a subagent or a repeating task, write four things:

• Goal and why. The agent works better when it knows the purpose, not only the task.
• What it may touch. Files or folders, nothing else.
• A budget. Turns, tokens or minutes.
• The stops (below).

2. Decide in advance when to stop

Stop and rethink, rather than raising the limit or retrying the same way, if:

1. Two checks in a row show no measurable progress (same state, same file, same figure).
2. The same error appears twice. Change the cause (a tool in a loop, an API limit) before retrying.
3. The budget of the brief is exceeded.
4. A git conflict or a locked file blocks progress. Do not force it.

And when the result comes back: at most three follow-up rounds, each with a reason. On the third, close it as applied or discarded. Nothing stays in limbo.

The skill

That is the whole thing. It fits in a plain-text SKILL.md you can read in thirty seconds and drop in your skills folder:

---
name: loop-stop
description: Brief a long-running agent or loop properly and know when to stop it. Use when launching or watching a subagent, a sweep or any repeating task.
---

The full file, with a short "why it exists" note, is free to use and copy for your own work: https://github.com/happy-program-zero/loop-stop

Honest notes

• This comes from our own experience on one project. We have not measured savings across other projects, so we make no promise about results.
• It is plain text. Read it before you use it; there is nothing hidden in it.
• It is not affiliated with Anthropic. "Claude" and "Claude Code" are trademarks of Anthropic.

If you want the rest of what we use (cross-checking a "done" by another route, a quota budget before long jobs, a daily hand-off report, file-based memory between sessions), there is a paid pack of seven skills: https://plainskills.gumroad.com/l/multi-ai-pack-complete. It is optional; the free one stands on its own.

What stop rules do you use for your own agents? I would like to hear which ones we are missing.