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Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

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Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#31
post #8

the "AI" bot closing the issue here is particularly funny

Vibes all the way down. "Please check out this other slop issue with 5-600 other tickets pointed to it" -- I was going to ask, how is anyone supposed to make sense of such a mess, but I guess the answer is "no human is supposed to"

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#33

Billing for what?

> Copilot Chat Extension Version: 0.37.2026013101

> VS Code Version: 1.109.0-insider (Universal) - f3d99de

Presumably there is such thing as the freemium pay-able "Copilot Chat Extension" for VS Code product. Interesting, I guess.

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#34

Every time I see something about trying to control an LLM by sending instructions to the LLM, I wonder: have we really learned nothing of the pitfalls of in-band signaling since the days of phreaking?

It'll be a sad day for Little Bobby Tables if in-band signaling ever goes out of fashion.

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#35

Every time I see something about trying to control an LLM by sending instructions to the LLM, I wonder: have we really learned nothing of the pitfalls of in-band signaling since the days of phreaking?

Sure but the exploit here isn’t prompt injection, it is an edge case in their billing that isn’t attributing agent calls correctly.

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#36
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's just say they are pretending to be helpful, how about that? > "Peer review" no unless your "peers" are bots who regurgitate LLM slop.

You think they lied about reproducing the issue? It’s useful to know if a bug can be reproduced.

We cannot know for sure but I think it's reasonably likely (say 50/50). Regurgitating an LLM for 90% of your comment does not inspire trust.

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#38
post #6

The laat comment is a person pretending to be a maintainer of Microsoft. I have a gut feeling that these kind of people will only increase, and we'll have vibe engineers scouring popular repositories to ""contribute"" (note that the suggested fix is vague). I completely understand why some projects are in whitelist-contributors-only mode. It's becoming a mess.

No where in the comment do they assert they are work for Microsoft. This is a peer-review.

It's performative garbage: authority roleplay edition.

Let me slop an affirmative comment on this HIGH TRAFFIC issue so I get ENGAGEMENT on it and EYEBALLS on my vibed GitHub PROFILE and get STARS on my repos.

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#40

Every time I see something about trying to control an LLM by sending instructions to the LLM, I wonder: have we really learned nothing of the pitfalls of in-band signaling since the days of phreaking?

It reminds me of when I used to write lisp, where code is data. You can abuse reflection (and macros) to great effect, but you never feel safe.

See also: string interpolation and SQL injection, (unhygienic) C macros

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