Definition
Plain language
When parts of a system keep busily reacting to each other forever without ever actually finishing.
As stated in the literature
A failure where processes or agents continuously change state in response to one another and never make progress; distinct from deadlock, where everything is frozen. In CoAgent, mutual self-healing without a precedence rule produces a livelock.
Why it matters: It is a subtle way a system can stall forever while looking busy, so designers need rules like fixed priority to break the endless back-and-forth.
For example, two people stepping aside in the same direction again and again in a hallway, each politely reacting to the other but never getting past.
Heard on the show
“It's a livelock — it never terminates.”Episode 150 — Don't Kill the Loser: A Different Way to Handle Two AI Agents Colliding