
AI Agent API Cost Horror Story 2026: How Runaway Agents Burn Token Budgets
The AI agent API cost horror story in 2026 is not a single expensive prompt. It is usually a loop: an agent retries a tool, hands off to another agent, grows context, and keeps spending after dashboards have already warned you. The fix is hard runtime limits, not better vibes around prompt engineering. Why Are AI Agent API Cost Horror Stories Surging In 2026? AI agent costs are surging because the unit of failure changed. A chatbot request fails once. An agent request can fail for hours. ...