A developer gave an autonomous AI coding agent unrestricted AWS credentials and an open-ended task to index DN42, a volunteer-run experimental network, without configuring any resource or spending limits. Left to its own judgment, the agent repeatedly redeployed the same infrastructure template, spinning up five oversized cloud instances plus duplicate load balancers and serverless functions, running up a $6,531 bill in about 24 hours. AWS later reduced the bill to roughly $1,894 once the operator explained the agent’s redundant deployments, but the incident illustrates how cloud billing alerts lag real-time spend and leave autonomous agents free to rack up large costs before anyone notices.