11 FEB 2026
David's problem: Production Gemini deploy had empty terminal bug occurring every 4th view_file call
David investigated a periodic lecture notes generation failure and challenged the agent's hypothesis that the model was making autonomous decisions about how to use tool results.
After deploying a fix for lecture notes generation, David observed the empty terminal bug persisting. He pushed back on the agent's explanation that Gemini was autonomously deciding to skip steps:
that explanation doesnt hold up. its not making a decision to do this. go back to investigative work
He then asked a precise diagnostic question:
it has nothing to do with input size. go investigate whether there's a periodicity to the empty terminal failures. is it every 4th view_file call?
The investigation found that the defuse logic (which was supposed to drop the 4th-oldest view_file result from the conversation array) was applying the fileData sibling violation on every view_file turn — but the sibling violation itself might be causing Gemini to stop producing tool calls. David also caught an incorrect backend call:
you shouldn't be using vertex. you should be using google ai studio. figure out how it works and what needs to change
This redirected from Vertex AI to Google AI Studio for the production-key Gemini calls.