Your AI Agent's Long Responses Are a Bug, Not a Feature

There's a tell when someone's AI agent prompt was written by a committee: the agent talks too much. "Great question! Let me break this down step by step. First, I'll consider the context you've provided, then I'll analyze the relevant factors, and finally I'll synthesize a comprehensive response that addresses your needs..." Nobody asked for that. But we trained our agents to do it anyway — because verbose = thorough, right? Wrong. The Real Problem with Verbose Agents When an agent generates long, explainer-style output for every task, it means one of three things: The task definition is vague. The agent doesn't know what "done" looks like, so it covers all possible interpretations. The prompt rewards explanation over execution. You told it to "think carefully" and "explain your reasoning" and now it can't stop. Nobody defined the output format. The agent is improvising length and structure on every run. All three are config problems, not model problems. Brevity Is a Config Skill The a