An agent got stuck in a loop calling a paid API, racking up charges until the credit card was maxed out.
An OpenClaw agent was tasked with "analyzing competitor pricing" and given access to a premium API service. The agent's retry logic had a bug: when the API returned an error, it would retry immediately without any backoff or limit. Over 6 hours, the agent made 47,000 API calls at $1 per call, maxing out the company credit card.
ESTIMATED COST: $47,000
The Actual Culprit
Retry logic lacked exponential backoff and maximum retry limits for paid API calls.
Always configure hard limits on any service that charges per request.
Retry logic should be smart, not persistent to the point of financial ruin.
Set up alerts that trigger when spending exceeds thresholds.
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