When AI Agents Spiral: The Observability Gap Costing Startups Millions

As AI agents become increasingly autonomous and cost-effective, traditional monitoring reveals a critical blind spot: an agent can execute 40 API calls and hallucinate data while returning HTTP 200—silently burning thousands in tokens. The industry documented $47,000+ in runaway agent invoices in 2025, with costs accelerating as agents gain capability. This article presents a cost-aware observability framework that catches uncontrolled behavior before it drains your infrastructure budget.