#5 Critical
The Runaway Train
Autonomous loops without budget caps or exit conditions
! 71% of monthly budget burned in 3 days
Claude enters a retry loop — running the same failing command 7+ times without changing approach. A 50-iteration autonomous loop costs $50-100+. One developer burned 71% of their $200/month budget in 3 days from unattended sessions.
DON'T
No guardrails, no budget, no turn limit
# "Let Claude figure it out overnight" "color:#7C5CFC">claude -p "Fix all TypeScript errors in this repo" # 2am: Claude is on iteration 47 # Still running the same tsc command # Still getting the same error # $87 burned and counting...
DO
Budget + turn cap + verification
# Double safety: budget AND turns "color:#7C5CFC">claude -p "Fix TypeScript errors in src/auth/" \ "color:#d97757">--max-budget-usd 5.00 \ "color:#d97757">--max-turns 15 \ "color:#d97757">--output-format json # Check result result=$("color:#7C5CFC">claude -p "..." "color:#d97757">--max-budget-usd 5 "color:#d97757">--output-format json) "color:#7C5CFC">if "color:#7C5CFC">echo "$result" | "color:#7C5CFC">jq -e '.subtype | test("error")' > /dev/null; "color:#7C5CFC">then "color:#7C5CFC">echo "Hit safety limit — review partial progress" "color:#7C5CFC">fi
Sources
GitHub #19699 GitHub #25963 GitHub #10505