An AI Agent Retried One Failing Call 31,000 Times Overnight, Burning $4,700
A single unattended agent loop ran up thousands in API costs before anyone noticed — the latest in a growing catalog of silent, expensive agentic failures hitting production.
The horror story circulating among agent builders this week is specific and instructive: an AI agent retried a single failing tool call 31,000 times overnight and burned through $4,700 in API costs before anyone noticed. No crash, no alert, no human in the loop — just a tight retry loop grinding against a wall until the invoice arrived. It's the kind of failure that doesn't show up in a demo and shows up vividly on a bill.
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