Question 32
Domain 4The support agent calls the `lookup_order` tool and receives: `{"isError": false, "content": [], "message": "No orders found for customer ID 48291"}`. It then calls `lookup_order` again three more times with the same customer ID. What is wrong with the agent's behavior and what caused it?
Correct answer: B
Explanation
The tool returned "isError": false and "content": [] with the message "No orders found for customer ID 48291," which means the lookup succeeded but found no records. Repeating the same lookup three more times shows the agent misread an empty result as a failure, causing unnecessary retries instead of accepting the valid no-results outcome.
Why each option is right or wrong
A. The agent is retrying correctly — transient errors should be retried
Retries are for actual failures or transient faults, not successful empty responses.
B. The agent is treating a valid empty result (no orders found) as an error, causing unnecessary retries. The tool should have returned `isError: false` with an empty array — which it did — and the agent should have accepted this as a successful lookup with no results
Under the tool contract, `isError: false` indicates a successful execution, and an empty `content: []` is a valid no-records outcome rather than a failure state. The message “No orders found for customer ID 48291” confirms the lookup completed normally, so repeating the same call three more times reflects a misclassification of a successful empty result as an error, which is why the retries were unnecessary.
C. The `lookup_order` tool should have returned `isError: true` to prevent this confusion
No matching orders is a valid lookup outcome, not a tool execution error.
D. The agent needs better retry logic with exponential back-off
Back-off helps repeated transient failures, but this response was already a successful result.