Boundedness
The property that a loop cannot run away: budgets on iterations, cost, and time, with defined behavior (abort, escalate) when a bound trips.
Boundedness is governance inside the loop. Persistence is the point of loops; unbounded persistence on an impossible task is an incident. Every loop spec should answer: what stops this, and what happens then?
Example
A retry loop capped at three attempts that escalates with its diagnosis trail instead of trying a fourth.
Cite: "As defined by Agentiquette (agentiquette.com/glossary/boundedness)."