# Limits and Defaults

> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.redpanda.com/llms.txt). Component-specific: [agentic-data-plane-full.txt](https://docs.redpanda.com/agentic-data-plane-full.txt)

---
title: Limits and Defaults
latest-operator-version: v26.2.4
latest-console-tag: v3.12.0
latest-connect-version: 4.113.1
latest-redpanda-tag: v26.2.4
docname: limits
page-component-name: agentic-data-plane
page-version: master
page-component-version: master
page-component-title: Agentic Data Plane
page-relative-src-path: limits.adoc
page-edit-url: https://github.com/redpanda-data/adp-docs/edit/main/modules/reference/pages/limits.adoc
description: Size and count limits Agentic Data Plane enforces, the defaults that apply when a setting is unset, and the sizing guidance the docs recommend.
page-topic-type: reference
personas: agent_builder, platform_engineer
learning-objective-1: Look up the size and count limits Agentic Data Plane enforces
learning-objective-2: Find the default that applies when a setting is left unset
learning-objective-3: Identify the page that explains a limit in context
page-git-created-date: "2026-09-16"
page-git-modified-date: "2026-10-05"
---

<!-- Source: https://docs.redpanda.com/agentic-data-plane/reference/limits.md -->

This reference collects the limits, defaults, and sizing guidance that are otherwise spread across the Agentic Data Plane docs.

Use this reference to:

-   Look up the size and count limits Agentic Data Plane enforces

-   Find the default that applies when a setting is left unset

-   Identify the page that explains a limit in context


Each row links to the page that explains the limit in context. Agentic Data Plane enforces limits when you save or when a request arrives. Guidance at the end of the page is advice, not enforcement.

## [](#names)Names, descriptions, and tags

| Item | Limit | Details |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Agent resource ID | Up to 63 characters | Derived from the agent’s name. A lowercase slug that starts with a letter, ends with a letter or digit, and contains letters, digits, and hyphens. Can’t change after creation. See Create an Agent. |
| Agent display name | Up to 128 characters | See Create an Agent. |
| Agent description | Up to 1,024 characters | See Set Up a Self-Managed Agent. |
| MCP server name | 1 to 63 characters | Lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only, starting with a letter. Used as the URL path segment. Can’t change after creation. See Create an MCP Server. |
| MCP server description | Up to 256 characters | See Create an MCP Server. |
| Guardrail name | 1 to 63 characters | Lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only. Used in the resource path. Can’t change after creation. See Create a Guardrail. |
| Guardrail display name and description | Display name up to 253 characters, description up to 1,024 characters | See Create a Guardrail. |
| LLM provider display name | Up to 253 characters | Agentic Data Plane derives the resource ID from it. See Configure an LLM Provider. |
| Tags on an agent, MCP server, LLM provider, or guardrail | At most 50 key/value pairs, each value up to 256 characters | See Track Spend by Tag and Create an MCP Server. |

## [](#agents)Agents

| Item | Limit or default | Details |
| --- | --- | --- |
| System prompt | Up to 50,000 bytes of UTF-8 | Applies to the agent and to each subagent’s instructions. That is 50,000 characters of unaccented Latin text and fewer with accented, non-Latin, or emoji characters. See Create an Agent. |
| Subagents per agent | At most 16 | Each subagent needs a description of 1 to 1,024 characters, which the parent agent reads to decide when to delegate. See Create an Agent. |
| Model identifier | 1 to 128 characters | Applies to the agent’s model and to a subagent’s model override. See Create an Agent. |
| MCP servers per agent | At most 32 references | Counts the root agent’s servers plus every subagent’s servers, as references rather than distinct servers. See Create an Agent. |
| Tool call timeout | 10 minutes | A managed agent waits up to 10 minutes for each tool call, including a call to a subagent. The limit is fixed. See Troubleshoot Agents. |
| Max iterations | Default 100 when unset or 0, at most 200 | The upper bound on reasoning loops per request. The API rejects a value above 200. No UI control sets it. Set it with rpk ai agent update --max-iterations, the API, or an applied configuration file. See Max iterations. |
| Self-managed agent client secret lifetime | Default 90 days, no maximum enforced | Applies when you create a secret without an expiry, which is what the Credentials tab always does. To set a different lifetime, create the secret with rpk ai agent credential create --ttl. Every secret has an expiry. There is no never-expires option. The plaintext is shown only at creation. See Set Up a Self-Managed Agent. |
| Client secrets per self-managed agent | 10 unexpired secrets | Only secrets that have not expired count toward the cap, so an expired secret frees its slot on its own. A request that would exceed the cap fails with resource_exhausted and the message secret cap exceeded. Revoke a secret you no longer use to free its slot immediately. See Set Up a Self-Managed Agent. |
| Span export token | About an hour | Mint tokens as you export rather than pinning one in an environment variable. See Self-Managed Agent Telemetry Reference. |

## [](#triggers)Triggers

| Item | Limit | Details |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Schedule triggers per agent | Up to 10 | Each with its own input prompt. See Run an Agent on a Schedule. |
| Gap between scheduled runs | At least 15 minutes | Agentic Data Plane rejects a schedule whose runs fall closer together as running too frequently. See Run an Agent on a Schedule. |
| Runs in flight per trigger | One | A run that stays in Running for more than about 15 minutes moves to Unknown. See Run an Agent on a Schedule. |
| Microsoft Teams trigger health check | About every 30 seconds | The messaging bridge validates the trigger’s credentials with Microsoft in the background. See Connect an Agent to Microsoft Teams. |

## [](#mcp-servers)MCP servers and tools

| Item | Limit | Details |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Code mode script | 64 KiB | The code passed to execute. See Code Mode. |
| Tool calls per execute | At most 50 | One code mode execution. Each sandbox also has a memory limit and a runtime limit. See Code Mode. |
| List filter expression | Up to 1,024 characters | The AIP-160 filter on the list APIs for MCP servers and OAuth providers. order_by takes up to 256 characters. See Create an MCP Server. |
| JavaScript server tools | At most 64 per bundle | Tool names match ^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]{1,64}$ and must be unique. See JavaScript. |
| JavaScript server bundle | 1 MiB, one self-contained file | No dynamic imports. See JavaScript. |
| JavaScript server network allowlist | At most 32 hostnames and 16 secret names | Hostnames only, reached over https. See JavaScript. |
| JavaScript tool call | 10 MiB memory, 10 seconds execution | Per tool call, including work still pending in promises. Each fetch gets 8 seconds and a 5 MiB response. Warm instances reconcile against stored configuration every 10 seconds. See JavaScript. |
| OpenAPI inline spec | 3 MiB | Host larger specs and pass the URL. The server truncates tool names longer than 64 characters. See OpenAPI. |
| SharePoint file tools | Upload 4 MiB of UTF-8 text, download 10 MiB | List tools return 100 items by default and accept a page_size up to 999. The search_content tool returns 25 hits by default and accepts a page_size up to 500. See SharePoint. |
| Metabase query results | 25 MiB | Larger results return an error. Lower the query’s limit or pre-aggregate. See Metabase. |
| Zendesk ticket comments | Up to 500 inline | With include_comments=true on a single-ticket fetch. See Zendesk. |

## [](#guardrails)Guardrails

| Item | Limit | Details |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Blocked input message and blocked output message | 1 to 500 characters each | Returned to the caller when a policy blocks a prompt or a response. See Create a Guardrail. |
| Denied topics | Up to 30 per guardrail | Topic name 1 to 100 characters, definition up to 1,000 characters, up to five example phrases of up to 100 characters each. See Guardrail Policy Reference. |
| Sensitive information custom patterns | Name 1 to 100 characters, RE2 pattern 1 to 500 characters | RE2 doesn’t support lookaround. See Guardrail Policy Reference. |
| Word filters | Up to 10,000 custom words in total, and up to 4 managed word lists | The word total counts every word across all groups, which is an Amazon Bedrock limit. See Guardrail Policy Reference. |
| Automated reasoning policies | 1 or 2 per guardrail | Each is a versioned policy ARN. See Guardrail Policy Reference. |

## [](#budgets)Budgets, spend, and time ranges

| Item | Value | Details |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Cost unit | Microcents: 1 cent = 1,000,000 microcents, so $1 = 100,000,000 microcents | Divide the cost in microcents (totalCostMicrocents in API responses) by 100,000,000 for dollars. See Set Up Budgets. |
| Budget periods | Daily, weekly, or monthly, calendar-aligned in UTC | Daily resets at 00:00 UTC, weekly at 00:00 UTC Monday, monthly at 00:00 UTC on the first of the month. See Set Up Budgets. |
| Budgets per tenant | One default plus at most one override per agent | The override’s target agent can’t change after creation. See Set Up Budgets. |
| At the budget cap | HTTP 429 until the period resets | The warning threshold must be greater than zero and less than the limit. When spend crosses it, responses carry a SpendLimit-Warning header and still succeed. See Set Up Budgets. |
| Cost and usage date range | Default last 7 days | Also last 14 days, 30 days, 90 days, month to date, quarter to date, year to date, and a custom range in UTC. See Analyze Cost and Usage. |
| Spend breakdown rows | Up to 5,000 per grouping | The Spend breakdown table on the Cost and usage page loads at most 5,000 rows for one grouping. When the window holds more, the table says so and suggests a narrower range. See Analyze Cost and Usage. |
| Audit log time range | Last 15 minutes to last 14 days, or a custom range | Captured request and response bodies are cut at 16 KB. See Review the Audit Log. |
| Agent network window | Default last 24 hours | Also last hour, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, last year, or a custom range. See Visualize Your Agent Network. |

## [](#telemetry)Self-managed agent telemetry

| Item | Limit | Details |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Spans per export request | 10,000 | Exceeding it fails the whole request. Reduce the exporter’s batch size. See Self-Managed Agent Telemetry Reference. |
| Export request payload | 4 MiB | Exceeding it fails the whole request. See Self-Managed Agent Telemetry Reference. |
| Attributes per span | 256 | Enforced per span with an OTLP partial success. See Self-Managed Agent Telemetry Reference. |
| Single attribute value | 4 MiB | Matches the export request payload, so the request limit is the one that binds in practice. Enforced per span with an OTLP partial success. See Self-Managed Agent Telemetry Reference. |
| Span timestamps | Within the last 30 days, up to 10 minutes in the future | Enforced per span. See Self-Managed Agent Telemetry Reference. |
| Validation log window | Last 24 hours | Shows permanent drops only, grouped by cause, on the agent’s Setup tab. See Validate ingestion. |

## [](#guidance)Sizing guidance

These are recommendations from the linked pages, not enforced limits.

| Item | Recommendation | Details |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Tools per agent | 10 to 15 | Agents with more than 20 to 25 tools often show degraded tool selection. Partition tools across subagents. See Choose an Agent Architecture. |
| Max iterations | 10 to 20 for simple queries, 20 to 40 for balanced workflows, 40 to 100 for complex analysis | Design workflows to finish in 20 to 30 iterations. Each iteration consumes tokens and adds latency. See Create an Agent and Why iterations matter. |
| Tool latency | Under 2 seconds | Slow tools multiply across iterations. See Troubleshoot Agents. |

## [](#next-steps)Next steps

-   [Create an Agent](https://docs.redpanda.com/agentic-data-plane/connect/create-agent/)

-   [Create an MCP Server](https://docs.redpanda.com/agentic-data-plane/connect/create-server/)

-   [Set Up Budgets](https://docs.redpanda.com/agentic-data-plane/control/budgets/)

-   [Self-Managed Agent Telemetry Reference](https://docs.redpanda.com/agentic-data-plane/connect/self-managed-telemetry/)