Agent Loop in Code

The core of the agent is a while loop:

  • model returned tool_calls → execute tools, add results to the messages list and continue;
  • no tool_calls → output the answer and finish.

The messages list grows continuously — the main job of the agent framework boils down to managing it: adding messages at the right time and sending the entire list to the model.

All context engineering techniques are essentially optimization of this list.

Related: ReAct Loop, Five Context Components