Exponential vs Linear: How to Tell If Your Event-Driven Trigger Is Looping

Recursive trigger loops grow exponentially from a single user action, while legitimate traffic scales linearly with user actions, creating a massive gap between the two curves. A simple rate limit of 100 executions per 60 seconds reliably catches loops (which hit 100 in under 8 seconds) without blocking legitimate workloads (typically under 80/min). Burst scenarios like bulk imports are a separate concern handled by aggregate events or configurable per-trigger limits.