Hi all,
I regularly set Codex on well scoped work in the evening but last night things went haywire. My Codex run consumed the remainder of my weekly pro plan allowance (80%+) and +$700 of additional usage credits before my spending cap finally stopped it. Effectively zero work was done.
Codex’s own subsequent postmortem acknowledged that:
- 35 queue packets in one night, 13 of them READY drops. Thirteen preregistration package directories for what is nominally one lease — nine numbered revisions plus draft/staging copies, 568 KB of seal material, most of it re-derived content.
- Recorded scope moved from 35 to 66 to 69 to 73 to 112 paths.
- The root cause: scope discovery and implementation were interleaved. Codex used a scanner it was simultaneously fixing to define the boundary of its own lease. Every scanner improvement invalidated the previous boundary, and each invalidation cost a full re-census of every path, a fresh seal package, a queue round trip, and a complete re-verification from me — 74 blob hashes across the amendments, plus a full seal read each time. Five scope moves, nine revisions.
I understand that I authorized the original task. I am not claiming that my account or payment method was compromised. However, I did not authorize or reasonably expect an uncontrolled recursive workflow that consumed nearly an entire weekly allowance plus ~$700 while I was asleep.
Has anyone dealt with this before and thoughts on additional controls you put in place to mitigate this risk?
