Project and account suspended after runaway automated tests by an AI coding assistant – appeals unanswered, all production services down

Gemini API
1

Hello,

My Google Cloud project “business-architecture-ai” was suspended on October 12, 2026 (JST) for policy violation, and my whole Google Cloud account is now restricted (“the entire service is unavailable”). Because of this, all of my company’s other production apps that use the Gemini API on this account are also down, affecting our users.

What happened:
I was developing an app with the help of an AI coding assistant (Claude by Anthropic). Without telling me the call volume, it ran automated quality tests from GitHub Actions using this project’s Gemini API key. On October 11-12 (JST) it made about 21,000 Gemini API calls within a few hours, many in parallel, and kept retrying failed requests after my prepaid credits ran out. I only learned the actual volume after the suspension. There was no malicious intent and no third-party misuse. The key was stored only in GitHub Secrets.

What I have done:

  • Stopped all automated tests. No calls have been made since October 12, 23:34 JST.
  • Future automated testing will only run with per-minute and concurrency limits, an immediate stop on any error, a spending cap, and my approval before each run.
  • Submitted appeals on October 13 and October 15 (JST). No response yet.

I take responsibility as the account owner for not supervising the work closely enough, and I apologize for any impact on Google’s services. Could someone from the Google team please look into my appeal or advise me on how to escalate it? I am happy to provide any information you need.

Thank you very much.

2

Sorry you’re dealing with this. Losing every production app because one test project got flagged is rough.

On the appeal: this forum is mostly community members, so the channels more likely to move are the appeal link in the suspension email and a billing/account support case from the Cloud console (billing support doesn’t need a paid plan). Put the project ID, both appeal dates and the timeline you wrote here in each one, and mention that you’ve rotated the key if you have.

Once access is back, it’s worth moving the other production apps into their own project, ideally on a separate billing account, so a test project can never take everything down again.

For the CI side, on top of what you listed: give tests their own key in their own project, and lower the request quotas for the Gemini API on that project in the console so a loop hits a hard wall. A budget alert on its own only sends an email, it doesn’t stop calls.

3

Hi @Koshiro_Katsura, For account suspension issues, please submit an appeal through the Google Cloud console. Additional details are available in the following resources:

  1. Google Cloud Project Suspension Guidelines

  2. Google Cloud Support: Project Warnings and Suspensions