## TL;DR
Fix this in policy acknowledgment collection agent by acting on the exact problem first: write each collected employee acknowledgment as collected in a run file keyed by employee id, check that file before collecting again, break after a repeat employee, and report staff still outstanding instead of recollecting cleared staff. Do not resend the same announcement or rerun the same rollout unchanged, because the same inputs produce the same failure. Prove the fix on one employee group or policy page first, then rerun the full scope and reconcile the results.

```text
agent stuck loop detected repeating the same step while trying to collect policy acknowledgments from staff error failure
```

## Use this when
- The operation in policy acknowledgment collection agent fails with this exact problem: agent stuck loop detected repeating the same step while trying to collect policy acknowledgments from staff error failure.
- The same failure repeats on retry with unchanged inputs.
- A policy rollout, handbook acknowledgment, announcement or employee question is blocked until this is resolved.

## Not for this skill when
- The notice is a platform outage from the vendor. Resolve that first, then return here if this problem remains.
- The operation completes and you only disagree with a policy wording or eligibility judgement. That is a policy owner decision, not this failure.

## Steps
1. Reproduce the failure on one named employee group, policy page or announcement in policy acknowledgment collection agent and record the full problem text plus the group, page or policy involved. Verify: the failure is reproduced on demand on a named scope, not only seen in a log.
2. Apply the specific fix for this problem: write each collected employee acknowledgment as collected in a run file keyed by employee id, check that file before collecting again, break after a repeat employee, and report staff still outstanding instead of recollecting cleared staff. Verify: the single failing group, page or announcement now behaves as the fix predicts, or the corrected value is visible on the record.
3. Check neighbouring employee groups, policy pages or announcements that share the same audience, template or schedule, because this class of failure rarely affects only one group. Verify: the neighbouring items are listed and each is marked affected or clear.
4. Rerun the original operation in policy acknowledgment collection agent on the previously failing scope, watching for the same problem rather than assuming success from a quiet log. Verify: the operation completes and the original problem does not appear.
5. Compare the result against the source of truth, the published policy text, the HR roster or the acknowledgment record, so a silent partial success is caught. Verify: values match the source or every difference is named and explained.
6. Record the fix, the triggering input and the verification result on the rollout log so the next occurrence is recognised immediately. Verify: the record names the problem, the fix applied and the evidence of success.

## Variant phrasings

### agent stuck loop detected repeating the same step while trying to collect policy acknowledgments from staff error failure
The verbatim form searchers paste from the console, report or run log. Treat it identically: same fix, same single group proof, then the full rerun.

### How to fix - agent stuck loop detected repeating the same step while trying to collect policy acknowledgments from staff error failure
The how to phrasing for the same failure in policy acknowledgment collection agent. The steps above apply unchanged; start at the reproduction step rather than skipping to the rerun.

### policy acknowledgment collection agent troubleshooting for this failure
The symptom first phrasing used when the console hides the full problem. Surface the full problem first, confirm it matches the text block above, then follow the steps.

## Why it happens
The collection check reads the acknowledgment report, which lags the filing system, so collected staff still look outstanding and the agent chases the same people in a loop.

## Edge cases
- The policy was republished, the audience changed or a group was renamed after the failing run started. Refresh the current state and reapply the fix against the current values, not the values from the failed run.
- The single group proof passes but the full rerun still fails on other groups. Treat each remaining failure as its own scope, because a shared audience, template or schedule can hide more than one cause.
- The source systems disagree on the correct value. The published policy text governs wording, the HR roster governs audience and employment status, and the acknowledgment record governs who signed; record which source won and why.

Compatibility: policy acknowledgment collection agent at current versions, plus the HR system, handbook or messaging tool the query names; no extra tooling beyond access to the source records needed to verify results.

## Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_z2yhs5UZ3hpmklZehWz-7g