Costs & Budgetsintermediatecurrenttested against paperclip 0.9
Set up cost alerts before your agents drain your budget
Cost controls are easier to add early than to retrofit after a noisy multi-agent setup is already running.
Use three guardrails
Set:
- a monthly budget
- an early warning threshold
- a hard stop threshold
This keeps experimentation safe without blocking useful work.
Good early defaults
For a new company, start lower than feels comfortable. Cheap systems force you to notice waste early.
What usually drives waste
- agents waking too often
- duplicate roles
- vague tasks that trigger long reasoning loops
Budget issues usually reveal a design issue, not just a pricing issue.