Right -- now here's a reality of the way that inventory systems work sometimes. (TW3 has a similar sort of limitation.) Whenever you create an item in the inventory, it creates an ItemID. For every new instance of that item (like if the number of that item changes...or I pick up two of the same type of gun) the game will need to assign a unique ItemID for it in order for the program to be able to tell the two different items apart or record the change to the stack, and that number, for each successive instance, will obviously get bigger.
So, if I am rapidly adding / removing items from my inventory, I may inadvertently increase that ID number to something that the engine no longer recognizes. Or a number that conflicts with some other function of the inventory. Or save system. Or loading system. Whatever. Something doesn't like it. That's where the bug must live.
BUT -- considering that CP2077 probably works similarly to TW3, Bethesda games, Bioware titles, etc. -- this also happens to your inventory whenever you save --> reload a game. First, the game reads your save file. It loads an "active" version of your inventory into RAM, and assigns new ItemIDs to every single piece of your inventory from top to bottom. It re-saves those larger numbers for every new save / quicksave, and they become the new default. This is how a program can correctly load older savegames. It compares the newer numbers with the older ones, and chooses the older, smaller number instead. (Computers can't "think", and items in your inventory are not "guns" and "medkits" to the computer. They're collections of data that it needs to be able to tell apart from one another using a numerical expression.)
Not all games are designed for unlimited, endless play. Not all games are designed for NG++++ etc. CP2077, as of now, seems to have been designed with upper limits in place (likely to avoid issues elsewhere in the engine, just like TW3).
The workaround for now?
Don't do it. Play the game until the end, then start a new game. Don't continue saving and reloading the same character for too long. Don't craft thousands of items at once.
Is that ideal? No. And hopefully it can be worked out in the future. Although...maybe not. No game that CDPR has ever created has ever been designed for ongoing, unlimited play. (NG+ was added into TW3 after its release; it was never intended. It was extremely difficult to get working without major issues, is capped at level 100, still gets wildly weird at higher levels, and there is no NG++. It can only be done once per playthrough.) CDPR designs their games with a finite structure: with a beginning, a middle, and an end. They are not meant to be played on and on like Dark Souls, GTA, or an MMO. They're meant to be restarted from the beginning with a new character and played differently. Love it or loathe it, that's the design.
So, for right now, the best step is not to put the game in this sort of situation. It's the nature of the machine. Or, more classically:
Patient: "Doctor! Doctor! It really hurts when I do this!"
Doctor: "Then, don't do that."
Now, the treatment can begin.
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