Definition
Plain language
The chain of steps where each one has to wait for the one before it, so its length sets how fast the whole thing can possibly finish.
As stated in the literature
In systems and scheduling, the sequence of dependent operations that bounds minimum completion time; a safety check on an agent's critical path blocks every next action until it returns, so stalling the check stalls the entire agent.
Why it matters: It identifies the bottleneck steps that cap overall speed, and it warns that stalling one link — like a mandatory safety check — freezes the whole process.
For example, you can't frost a cake before you bake it and can't bake before you mix, so the total time is set by that unavoidable chain of waits.
Heard on the show
“And reflection — the whole memory-building process — runs off the critical path, on finished trajectories, asynchronously.”Episode 168 — When Turning Experience Into Code Makes Your AI Agent Dumber