Cycles — Runtime authority for autonomous agents

Use Case 1: Preventing Runaway API Costs

Problem: Autonomous agents can enter recursive loops or retry storms, consuming thousands of dollars in LLM API credits in minutes.
Solution: Cycles acts as a pre-execution gatekeeper that reserves a specific budget before an action is allowed to proceed, terminating the process if limits are exceeded.
Example: A developer sets a $1.00 cap on a research agent task; if the agent attempts a loop that would cost $10.00, Cycles blocks the call before the provider is billed.

Use Case 2: Restricting High-Risk Actions

Problem: Agents with access to external tools might perform irreversible actions, such as deleting database records or sending unauthorized emails, due to prompt regressions.
Solution: The platform intercepts tool calls and enforces "blast radius" boundaries, allowing internal logic to proceed while blocking high-risk external mutations.
Example: A support agent is permitted to query a database but is blocked by Cycles when it attempts to send an automated email to 200 customers simultaneously.

Use Case 3: Multi-Tenant Resource Management

Problem: In SaaS applications, a single user's runaway agent can exhaust the entire platform's shared API quota, causing downtime for all other customers.
Solution: Developers use the governance layer to isolate budgets and permissions for every individual customer session.
Example: A platform provider ensures that Customer A's high-volume agent tasks never interfere with or consume the API capacity allocated to Customer B.