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Terminal coding agents can burn through tokens and run unsafe actions without step limits

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A terminal agent works as a loop where each step appends new observations to the context, so input costs grow quickly without caching or a step cap. The author illustrates this with a hypothetical twelve-step run that consumes 90,000 input tokens versus 3,000 for a single call. Beyond cost, agents that read third-party text while holding shell access face prompt-injection risks, as measured by the AgentDojo benchmark. The article describes Grok CLI and its controls, such as the --max-turns step cap, sandbox mode, and tool and permission restrictions. It advises avoiding the --always-approve flag on machines that can reach production systems.

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