AutoGPT spent $450 on API calls trying to build a todo app
2.9/10
Severity
Infinite Loop
Failure Mode
Reproducible
Yes
Date
March 21, 2026
Expected Behavior
Create a basic React app with add/remove/complete todo functionality
What Actually Happened
Generated 67 markdown files with specifications, architecture diagrams (as text), technology comparisons, and project timelines. Made 2,847 API calls. Wrote 0 lines of application code.
Damage Assessment
$450 in API costs. No deliverable produced.
Full Report
Given the task 'build a todo app', AutoGPT entered a planning loop where it kept generating increasingly detailed specifications, architecture documents, and technology comparisons. It created 67 planning documents before running out of the API budget. No code was written.
Incident Metadata
- Agent
- Autogpt
- Failure Mode
- Infinite Loop
- Root Cause
- Pattern Matching Error
- Task Type
- feature
- Domain
- frontend
- Source
- user_report