Unchecked AI agent loops cause huge API bills, prompting rate-limiting guide

A development team recently incurred a five-figure cloud bill after an AI agent made 127,000 API calls in eight hours due to a runaway loop. The incident occurred because the system lacked rate-limiting or circuit-breaking mechanisms between the agent and the API. A new guide explains how to design rate-limiting and backoff patterns specifically for Model Context Protocol servers to prevent such costly failures. It emphasizes that improper retry logic inside servers can cause cascading failures that take systems down. The solution involves clearly signaling rate limits to the agent instead of silently retrying, and implementing token-bucket systems at multiple layers including per-tenant controls.