Reflection and Self-Critique Loops
After each step, ask the model 'did that work? what next?' — the cheapest reliability win.
What Is Reflection?
Reflection is when the agent looks at its own past actions and asks: "What went well? What went poorly? What should I do differently?"
The cheapest reliability win in agents.
Reflexion Paper
Shinn et al. 2023 introduced Reflexion. After each failed attempt, the agent writes a self-critique and uses it as guidance for the next attempt. Quality jumped dramatically.
All lessons in this course
- Hierarchical Task Decomposition
- Goal Stacks and Backtracking
- World Models and Lookahead
- Reflection and Self-Critique Loops