Reading your usage
Where the authoritative figure lives, what the run lifecycle meters, and how to forecast.
Your account is the only place a real number lives. Everything else — the model picker's indicative figures, the tables in this documentation, arithmetic you do from either — exists to help you choose between options before you commit.
The lifecycle a metered run goes through
Reserve
Headroom is set aside before the work starts, against the rate version live at that moment. A run cannot begin without it.
Authorise
The reservation is checked against entitlements. A workspace without the entitlement does not reach a provider at all.
Execute
The work happens. Provider calls are made here and nowhere earlier.
Meter
What was actually consumed is recorded, which is usually less than was reserved.
Settle
The reservation is released and the real charge applied.
Forecasting
- Take one agent's first full week and multiply. The first week is usually the most expensive per item, because briefs are being corrected and runs are retrying.
- Retries are the usual surprise. A run that failed twice was metered three times, and the trace shows all three.
- Model choice dominates everything else. The spread across the six models is roughly nine to one for the same request.
- Interval dominates volume. A one-minute loop is sixty times an hourly one for information that changes twice a day.