Some genius made his AI remind him to get milk in the morning and it used up his $20 account balance overnight because it kept checking if it was morning every 30 minutes. Lmao. “AI”
https://bsky.app/profile/rusty.todayintabs.com/post/3mdrdhzqmr226
The "Heartbeat" cron job, even though literally the only thing I had going was one silly reminder, ("remind me tomorrow to get milk")
1. Sent ~120,000 tokens of context to Opus
4.5
2. Opus read HEARTBEAT md, thought about reminders
3. Replied "HEARTBEAT_OK"
4. Cost: ~$0.75 per heartbeat (cache writes)
The damage:
- Overnight = ~25+ heartbeats
- 25 × $0.75 = ~$18.75 just from heartbeats alone
- Plus regular conversation = ~$20 total
The absurdity: Opus was essentially checking
"is it daytime yet?" every 30 minutes, paying $0.75 each time to conclude "no, it's still night."
Benjamin De Kraker
@BenjaminDEKR
OpenClaw is interesting, but will also drain your wallet if you aren't careful.
Last night around midnight I loaded my Anthropic API account with $20, then went to bed.
When I woke up, my Anthropic balance was $O.
Opus was checking "is it daytime yet?" every 30 minutes, paying $0.75 each time to conclude "no, it's still night."
Doing literally nothing, OpenClaw spent the entire balance. How?