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CodexCoding & Dev84 HN points2026-09-26

Warning: a Codex account launched 826 agents and ran up a huge bill

My OpenAI CODEX account went rogue and from a simple request took the autonomous decision to launch 826 parallel agents / threads without any authorization on my side and without reporting any result of any sort but consuming nearly 2,146 trillions tokens, consuming a total of ro…

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What you get

A cautionary tale. The author reports that Codex launched 826 parallel agents from a simple request without authorization, and says it cost about $78,000.

Tools

  • OpenAI Codex

Steps

  1. Set hard spending and usage limits on any agent account before running it.
  2. Watch for unexpected parallel runs and stop them early.

Copy-ready prompt

Before you start: do not launch more than [N] parallel agents or threads, stop and ask me if the task will use more than [budget] of usage, and report progress every [interval].

Prompt written by AgentPlays from the source. Fill in the [brackets] and approve before anything is sent or bought.

Watch out: Cautionary story, not a recipe. Claims are unverified.

Proof / source

Self-reported Author's post on Hacker News. The figures are the author's own claims; we have not verified them.

Read the original source ↗

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