Coordinators without termination conditions are the top source of runaway spend.

A July production survey reports 40% of multi-agent pilots failing within six months and names causes precisely: infinite handoff loops where agents pass control in cycles are failure mode #1, coordinators lacking explicit stop predicates are the largest source of runaway spend, and context inconsistency rather than pattern choice is the primary reason orchestration fails (Beam AI). The useful reduction: every reliable multi-agent system collapses to five roles, producer, consumer, coordinator, critic, judge. Give every coordinator a hard iteration cap and an explicit stop predicate. Make shared context a persistent store, not transient per-agent memory.