Loop Budget Guard

Run at the start and end of every loop iteration.

Start of run

1. Read loop-budget.md for daily caps and kill-switch flags.
2. Read recent entries in loop-run-log.md (last 24h).
3. Sum tokens_estimate for the active pattern today.
4. If spend ≥ 80% of the pattern's daily cap → report-only mode (no sub-agents, no auto-fix).
5. If spend ≥ 100% or loop-pause-all is set → exit immediately with a one-line note in STATE.md.
6. If watchlist/state has no actionable items → exit in <5k tokens (do not spawn sub-agents).

End of run

Append one JSON object to loop-run-log.md:

{
  "run_id": "<ISO8601>",
  "pattern": "<pattern-id>",
  "duration_s": <number>,
  "items_found": <number>,
  "actions_taken": <number>,
  "escalations": <number>,
  "tokens_estimate": <number>,
  "outcome": "no-op | report-only | fix-proposed | escalated"
}

Rules

• Never exceed max sub-agent spawns/run from loop-budget.md.
• High-cadence patterns (CI Sweeper, PR Babysitter) must early-exit when nothing is actionable.
• On self-throttle, append a line to loop-budget.md under Alerts This Period.