AutoGPT stuck repeating the same task loop

AutoGPT stuck repeating the same task loop

Last night I let AutoGPT try a simple research job. It found the first website, wrote a plan, then looped on the same “visit site” action forever.

INFO  Running with goal: Research Rust async examples
THOUGHT  Visit https://tokio.rs/
ACTION   browser.open_url
RESULT   Page loaded
THOUGHT  Visit https://tokio.rs/
...

Docker image significantgravitas/autogpt:0.4.2, Python 3.10.11. Running on WSL2 Ubuntu 22.04. OPENAI_API_KEY set, no proxy.

CPU pegged, no net calls after first hit. logs/AUTO_GPT_CHARSET showed the repeated chain.

Fixed it by:

• editing auto_gpt/config.py and setting ALLOW_DOWNLOADS = False
• adding "useBrowser": false in ai_settings.yaml
• restarting the container

With downloads disabled AutoGPT jumped to the next task and completed.

If it still loops check workspace/ for non‑UTF8 files; bad encodings break the memory parser.