AddThisFeature

AI Cost Budgets

Cap what AI features are allowed to spend before the bill arrives.

involved Developer Experience

What it adds

Monetary spending limits on AI work, scoped by workspace, feature, and time period, enforced before a run starts.

What your agent is told to do

5
  1. 1

    Find every place the app calls a model and route all of them through one accounting point that records estimated and actual spend against a scope. A budget that only covers the chat feature is not a budget.

  2. 2

    Estimate the cost of a run from the size of its input before dispatching it, and refuse anything that would exceed the remaining budget on its own.

  3. 3

    Reserve the estimate against the budget when the run starts, then reconcile to the real usage figures when it finishes, releasing whatever was over-reserved.

  4. 4

    Define both a soft limit that warns owners and continues, and a hard limit that stops new runs, and let an operator raise either without a deploy.

  5. 5

    This entry owns money. AI Usage Quotas owns countable units such as messages, documents, and runs. Share the same interception point but keep the two ledgers separate, and do not express one in terms of the other.

Edge cases it handles

8
  • An unusually large request must be priced before it is sent, not discovered afterwards. Estimate from the input size and refuse anything that alone would blow the remaining budget, telling the user what to trim.
  • Streaming and tool-using runs do not have a known cost at dispatch. Reserve a conservative estimate up front, then reconcile against the real usage the provider reports when the run closes, releasing the difference.
  • Several runs starting at the same moment must not each see the same remaining balance and all be admitted. Reserve atomically so concurrent requests cannot oversell the same headroom.
  • Soft and hard limits must behave differently and visibly: a soft limit warns the owner and keeps working, a hard limit refuses new runs while letting in-flight ones finish and settle.
  • The pricing figures used to compute spend change over time. Keep them versioned with effective dates, record which version priced each run, and never retroactively reprice settled history.
  • If the provider never returns usage figures for a run, the reservation must still be settled on a timeout rather than pinning that amount forever.
  • A budget reset at a period boundary must not release money for runs that are still in flight across it.
  • When the model provider is unavailable, no budget is consumed. A failed dispatch must release its reservation rather than counting as spend.

Definition of done

8
  • Every model call in the app passes through a single accounting point that records spend against a scope.
  • Large requests are cost-estimated before dispatch and refused with an explanation when they exceed the remaining budget.
  • Reservations are made atomically and reconciled to actual usage, so concurrent runs cannot overspend a budget.
  • Soft limits warn and continue while hard limits stop new work, and both are adjustable by an operator without a deploy.
  • Pricing tables are versioned with effective dates and each run records the version that priced it.
  • Failed, timed-out, and provider-unavailable runs release their reservations instead of counting as spend.
  • The feature matches the existing design system.
  • No existing functionality is broken.

Related features

How it works

  1. 1

    Copy the link

    Grab the Markdown instruction URL for this feature.

  2. 2

    Give it to your AI

    Paste it into Claude Code, Cursor, v0, Lovable — whatever you build with.

  3. 3

    It inspects, then implements

    Your agent reads your existing app first, then adds the feature to fit it.

Works with your stack

These instructions are written to adapt. They tell the agent to detect your framework, match your existing design system, and reuse what you already have — rather than assuming a particular stack.

Need it tighter than that? Customize the feature and tell it exactly what you're running.