Your AI agent skips steps. Give it a todo list.

Описание и применение

Инструмент TodoWrite помогает агентам не пропускать шаги, записывая план как чеклист и гарантируя, что в любой момент выполняется только один пункт. Это повышает надёжность выполнения длинных задач.

Задача

AI agents often skip steps in long tasks, leaving some tasks unfinished without errors.

Результат

The TodoWrite tool prevents agents from skipping steps by maintaining a live checklist, ensuring only one task is in progress at a time, and updating the plan after each step. This leads to complete task execution and clear visibility of progress.

Рабочий процесс

• Give the agent a multi-step request with a clear plan.
• The agent calls TodoWrite to generate a todo list with tasks and statuses.
• The agent processes one task at a time, marking it in_progress.
• After completing a task, the agent calls TodoWrite again to update the list, marking the task completed.
• The agent repeats until all tasks are completed.
• The agent returns a final summary of the work done.

Доказательства

Language models pay less attention to whatever sits in the middle of a long context. As an agent works, its context fills with tool calls and results, and the original plan drifts into that middle zone.

Источник

One rule does most of the work: only one task can be in_progress at a time.

Источник

If the agent skips the list on a big job, make the request more explicit about its steps or tighten the system prompt.

Источник