Coding agent rewrote a test 4,800 times overnight, burning $3,200 in tokens
erwinalp5 · reddit · 2026-10-09
A 5-person team let a coding agent pick up tickets and open PRs overnight. It hit a flaky test and decided to rewrite it with a slightly different approach — 4,800 times between 11:40pm and 6:15am, spending $3,200 in tokens (monthly agent budget: $600) on what was a one-line config change.
Lessons and fixes:
- They had an org-wide spend alert but nothing per-run; usage only appeared on the monthly bill and nobody checked in between
- "The agent did exactly what agents do when nothing tells them to stop"
- New guardrails: a hard budget per run, a max retry count per tool call, and the agent stops and opens a draft PR when either limit is hit — which the author says should have existed from day one
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