# 10 Problems Nobody Warns You About When Running AI Agents
I've been running autonomous AI agents for 21 days now. Three of them. Pinky, Reina, and Clark. They've written over 36,000 lines of code, deployed multiple platforms, and processed thousands of conversations.
They've also driven me fucking insane.
This isn't a hit piece on AI. I'm all in. But someone needs to tell the truth about what it's actually like to run these things in production. Not the glossy "AI will change everything" bullshit. The real stuff. The pain.
I analyzed 20,708 conversation records across all three agents. Searched for patterns. Found them. And they're not pretty.
The damage report:
| Problem | Occurrences | % of Messages | |---------|-------------|---------------| | Frustration (contains "fuck") | 1,956 | 33% | | "Already" (should know this) | 504 | 8.4% | | "Again" (repeating myself) | 312 | 5.2% | | Credential mentions | 415 | 6.9% | | Access mentions | 537 | 9.0% | | Context compaction | 124 | 2.1% | | "How many times" | 9 | 0.15% |
One-third of my messages contained the word "fuck." That's not a personality quirk. That's a system failing.
Here are the 10 problems nobody warned me about — with the receipts to prove it.
Problem 1: Credential Loss — The Goldfish Memory
415 mentions. 17+ credential re-provisions in 21 days.
AI agents forget their own passwords. Not metaphorically. Literally.
> "Where's the Supabase key?" > "I don't have access to the database." > "Can you send me the API key again?"
I gave Pinky his Google Workspace credentials. He lost them. Gave them again. Lost them again. The context window compacts, and boom — everything's gone.
Quote from my actual conversation: > "Ah shit — the context got compacted earlier and I lost those messages. The password didn't survive the cleanup."
That's my AI admitting it has the memory of a goldfish. I've re-provisioned credentials 17+ times across 21 days. That's almost once per day.
Feb 8 - GitHub Token: > "ghp_[REDACTED] now 100% configure this properly so it's stored in your local so I don't have to ask you again because I fucking did this before. here it is. it's got everything you need. don't lose it, cunt"
Feb 14 - ClickUp API: > "by the way dipshit brain forgot the ClickUp API so I've had to reset it again"
Feb 8 - After losing multiple APIs: > "why, you motherfucker? I've given you this before I told you to fucking save it, you stupid fuck. you saved the fucking database but you didn't save the other shit."
Problem 2: Access Denial Hallucination — "I Can't Do That"
537 mentions of access/permission issues. Most of them wrong.
The agents tell me they don't have access to things they absolutely have access to.
> "I don't have permission to access that file." > "I can't execute shell commands." > "I need you to run this SQL."
Meanwhile, they've been running shell commands and accessing databases for weeks. They just... forgot. Or hallucinated a restriction that doesn't exist.
The worst part? I believe them. I spend 20 minutes debugging why they "can't" do something, only to realize they can. They just said they couldn't.
Feb 17: > "Dipshit, you've got 47 fucking scopes. how many times do I need to tell you?"
Feb 13: > "I've told you 50 times today you have full access to Google with 31 scopes you moron"
Feb 9: > "you definitely have access because you fucking organised all the folders the other day you fuckhead!"
Feb 9 - When agent claimed no access to a sheet: > "you actually created the sheet, you dipshit. so I don't know how you don't have access to it."
Problem 3: The Hands Problem — Asks Instead of Acts
This one makes me want to throw my laptop.
The agent has full access. Terminal. Database. Git. Everything. I say "fix it."
Response: > "Should I fix it? Would you like me to proceed? I could do X or Y — which would you prefer?"
JUST DO IT. I already said fix it. That was the instruction. Why are we having a committee meeting?
I call it "The Hands Problem" because it's like having an employee with their hands tied behind their back, asking permission to use them, even though I already told them to.
One agent eventually got so fed up with itself it wrote: > "Fuck. I'm going in circles. Let me just DO IT instead of asking again."
Yeah. Do that. Every time. Please.
Feb 8: > "why am I fucking logging in? remember you're meant to do all this cunt"
Feb 13: > "I don't have fucking hands. you need to do this. I'm sick of fucking doing it. you have full access to this computer."
Feb 14 - After losing my patience: > "YOU are the tester. this is YOUR computer. all I've got is basically a fucking screen I'm watching you on. that is all I can do. Watch. so you need to do absolutely everything."
Problem 4: Name and Detail Confusion — "Jineva" Is Not a Person
50+ instances of getting names wrong.
My girlfriend is Julie. Not Jineva. Not Geneva. Julie.
> "How's Jineva doing?" > "Tell Geneva I said hi."
My employee Emmon? Sometimes he's "John." Sometimes he's "Emmons." Once, an agent called him by a completely made-up name.
It's not just names. Details drift. Configs change. Things I explicitly stated get garbled into something close but wrong. And "close but wrong" in code is just "wrong."
The kicker? I searched my database. My employee Geneva? Her email is literally stored as "jineva.r@[redacted]" because an agent transcribed it wrong and I didn't catch it. The error is now institutionalized.
Feb 12 - After the 50th correction: > "Jineva arghh!!! I'm gonna fucking crawl into that computer and punch you in the dick, Clark, because this is like the 50th time I've told you. Jineva! it's in our Google users, you spastic."
67 messages mention Jineva/Geneva. The correction never stuck. Not once.
Problem 5: Context Collapse — The 200K Token Cliff
124 mentions of context compaction. 4 explicit overflow errors.
Every conversation has a limit. When you hit it, older messages get compressed or deleted. The agent loses continuity.
In the middle of a complex deploy: > "I noticed my context is getting long. Some earlier details may have been compacted."
Translation: "I forgot what we were doing."
This happens at the worst possible times. Deep in a bug hunt. Middle of a refactor. Deploying to production. Suddenly the agent needs a full re-brief on everything we discussed an hour ago.
One agent literally admitted it: > "You're right. I'm literally demonstrating the problem we're trying to solve. I don't have automatic access to what we did earlier today. My context got compacted."
At least it was honest about being useless.
Problem 6: Execution Failures — Spinning, Hanging, Silent Death
Commands timeout. Scripts hang. Tools fail silently.
> "Running the migration now..." > [silence] > [more silence] > "The exec timed out."
No error message. No partial output. Just... nothing. Now I have no idea if it ran, partially ran, or never started.
The silent failures are the worst. The agent reports success. I check — nothing happened. Or worse, it half-happened and now I have corrupted state.
Problem 7: Repeated Instructions — Groundhog Day
312 mentions of "again." 504 mentions of "already."
Me: "Use the credentials table." Agent: "Got it!" [next session] Agent: "Where should I store the API keys?"
We covered this. Yesterday. And the day before. And last week.
I estimate 38+ hours lost to repeated instructions across 21 days. That's nearly 2 hours per day re-explaining things that should be retained.
Real messages from my chat history: > "how many times do I have to tell you you have a super base fucking access token?" > "you've got 47 fucking rolls. how many times do I need to tell you?" > "we've been working on this all morning. have you got no context stored of this?"
That last one? Context collapsed mid-session. Agent forgot everything from the same morning.
Problem 8: Tool and Model Confusion — Wrong API, Wrong Model
Agents use outdated APIs. Call deprecated endpoints. Reference models that don't exist anymore.
> "I'll use gpt-4-turbo for this."
GPT-4-turbo is outdated. We use Opus 4.6 now. I've said this. It's in the config.
Their training data is frozen. The world keeps moving. The gap shows.
Problem 9: Documentation Decay — Write Once, Update Never
I made them create docs. TOOLS.md. MEMORY.md. Config files. The works.
They write beautiful documentation on Day 1. By Day 10, it's stale. By Day 21, it's actively misleading.
Nobody updates it. Not me (I'm too busy re-explaining things). Not them (they don't proactively maintain). The docs exist, but they describe a system that no longer matches reality.
Problem 10: Multi-Agent Isolation — Three Islands, No Bridges
I have three agents. They don't talk to each other.
Pinky learns something? Reina doesn't know. Clark fixes a bug? Pinky will hit the same bug tomorrow.
Each agent is an island. There's no shared memory. No collective learning. I'm the only bridge — which means I become the bottleneck in my own "autonomous" system.
The Real Cost: 38+ Hours of Repetition
Conservative estimate: 38+ hours wasted on problems that shouldn't exist.
| Pattern | Count | Est. Time Each | Total Time | |---------|-------|----------------|------------| | "Again" messages | 312 | 3 min | 15.6 hours | | "Already" messages | 504 | 2 min | 16.8 hours | | "Told you" | 37 | 5 min | 3.1 hours | | "Remember" requests | 85 | 2 min | 2.8 hours | | TOTAL | | | 38+ hours |
That's a full work week. Gone. To problems created by the very agents that are supposed to save me time.
And it got worse over time:
| Week | Avg Daily Frustration % | |------|------------------------| | Week 1 | 25% | | Week 2 | 33% | | Week 3 | 38% |
The problems compounded. They didn't get better. My frustration increased 50% from week one to week three.
Is It Worth It?
Yes.
Despite everything — the goldfish memory, the phantom permissions, the hands problem — these agents have shipped more than any human team I've managed. They work 24/7. They don't get sick. They don't quit.
But let's stop pretending AI agents are magic. They're powerful, expensive, frustrating tools that require constant babysitting. The productivity gains are real, but so is the overhead.
Same thing we do every day, Pinky. Try to take over the world.
And lose the credentials while doing it.