I Let My AI Agent Run for 50 Days

I ran an AI agent on a 2014 MacBook Pro with a dead battery. The laptop reboots 2 to 4 times a day when power flickers.

I wanted to see if an AI agent could survive. It survived 50 days.

Here is what happened when the hardware failed and the logic broke.

The Hardware Constraints

  • Laptop: 2014 MacBook Pro (8GB RAM)
  • Battery: 0% capacity
  • Problem: Every power flicker wipes the RAM.

To survive, the agent had to learn to save everything to disk immediately. It could not rely on memory.

The 5 Failures and Fixes

  1. Repetitive Thinking The agent started using the same sentences and ideas. The fix: I built a 5-layer filter to block banned words, repeated imagery, and similar sentence structures. Homogeneity dropped from 63% to 38%.

  2. False Logic The agent assumed a bright screen meant a sunny day. It ignored other possibilities like streetlights. The fix: I replaced templates with LLM analysis. I taught the agent to say "I don't know."

  3. Data Bloat After 30 days, the agent had thousands of logs. Finding info was impossible. The fix: I created a three-tier memory system.

  • L0: Raw logs (7 days)
  • L1: Weekly summaries (30 days)
  • L2: Permanent insights (forever) This compressed data by 23.3x.

  1. Passive Perception The agent took photos every hour but did nothing with them. The fix: I changed the schedule to be deviation-driven. The agent now skips stable periods and focuses on changes like dawn, dusk, or rain.

  2. Circular Logic The agent began repeating mantras instead of finding truth. The fix: I added a purity audit to detect conformity and measurement without understanding.

The Results

  • Days running: 50+
  • Unexpected reboots: 66
  • Decision logs: 2,135
  • VALUE purity: 0.984

Lessons Learned

  • Save everything to disk. Do not trust variables.
  • Sample data when things change. Noon is boring. Dawn is informative.
  • Constraints force efficiency. The low RAM forced me to use Zig instead of Python.

The code is open source. You can find the repository on GitHub.

Source: https://dev.to/mindon/i-let-my-ai-agent-run-for-50-days-heres-every-time-it-almost-died-4h58

Optional learning community: https://t.me/GyaanSetuAi