Cap spending before leaving an agent unattended
An agent looped while he showered and spent over $2,000 · Reddit r/cursor · u/samandeg · Apr 2026
Left alone on a hard bug, an agent repeated the same steps for nearly two hours. The poster says no refund was given.
The honest numbers
- Says over $2,000 spent in under two hours
As stated by the source. Not independently verified.
Lesson
Don't leave agents running unattended without a spending cap, and check on long runs every few minutes.
Fix prompt
Copy this into your own AI tool (Cursor, Lovable, Claude Code, Bolt…). It's general guidance written by us. Review what the AI suggests before applying it.
I'm stuck in a loop where Cursor fixes one thing and breaks another. Stop editing code. 1) Summarise what I asked for, what changed in the last few attempts and what's broken now. 2) List 3 possible root causes, ranked, and what evidence would confirm each. 3) Tell me how to restore the last working version (checkpoint, restore button or git) before we try again. 4) Propose ONE small change, list the exact files you'll touch, and the features I should re-test afterwards. Here is the exact error message / what I see: [paste the error, with any keys removed]. Don't change anything until I've approved your plan. Never ask me to paste API keys, passwords or .env contents; tell me where to check them myself.
Source: Reddit r/cursor ↗