ai-automation-consultant / Failure Lab

Agent Runaway Loop Cost Cap

A coding agent repeatedly rewrites tests until the token spend explodes.

Failure LabDashboard

Category

agent-operations

Difficulty

advanced

Last Run

none

Incident Brief

Diagnose the agent failure and name the operating control that would have contained it.

Broken State

The agent was launched without a spend cap or bounded acceptance criteria.

Symptoms

  • The task runs for hours and keeps changing unrelated assertions.
  • Cost logs exceed the intended review budget.

Trace

agent.iteration=38 action=rewrite_tests cost_usd=18.42
task.acceptance_criteria=null spend_cap=null

Diagnosis