Agent Cost Guard 💰

Stop surprise AI bills. Track, budget, and optimize your agent spending.

🔥 GitHub Copilot just moved to usage-based billing (HN 545pts, Apr 2026). Cost awareness is no longer optional — it's survival.

Why now? free-claude-code is trending #1 on GitHub with 37K+ stars — developers are desperate to control AI costs. GitHub Copilot's shift to usage billing made cost awareness mandatory. This skill gives you that awareness before the bill arrives.

The Pain

You're spending money. You don't know how much.

• "How much did today's 6-hour coding session cost?"
• "Why is my Claude bill $200 this month?"
• "I'd use cheaper models for simple tasks but always forget"
• "My team blew through the AI budget in week one"

GitHub Copilot → usage billing. free-claude-code 17.5K★ (+1,741/day). mattpocock/skills 37.7K★ (+7,321/day). The signal is clear: cost control is the #1 AI agent pain point in 2026.

The Solution

Agent Cost Guard gives you visibility and control:

💰 This Session: $3.47
├─ Claude Opus 4: $2.81 (81%)
└─ Claude Sonnet 4: $0.66 (19%)

📊 Today: $7.23 / $10 daily budget
⚠️  Alert: 72% of budget used
💡 Tip: 12 simple edits could use Haiku → Save $4.20

Quick Start

# Install
git clone https://github.com/aptratcn/agent-cost-guard.git ~/.agent-skills/

# Check status
cost-status

# Set daily budget ($10)
cost-budget --daily 10

# See history
cost-history --7d

# Get recommendations
cost-optimize

Features

Feature	What it Does	Why It Matters
Real-time tracking	Estimates cost per task	Know before the bill
Budget alerts	Warn at 70%, stop at 100%	Never overspend again
Model recommendations	"Use Haiku for this"	Save 60-80% on simple tasks
Cost reports	By project, task, time	Track where money goes

Example Session

$ cost-status

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 💰 Agent Cost Guard — Session Summary        │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Session Time: 2h 34m                         │
│ Tasks Completed: 23                          │
│                                              │
│ 💵 Cost Breakdown:                           │
│ ├─ Complex Debug (Opus 4): $4.12 (60%)      │
│ ├─ Code Review (Sonnet): $1.87 (27%)        │
│ └─ Quick Edits (Sonnet): $0.89 (13%)        │
│ Total: $6.88                                 │
│                                              │
│ 📊 Budget Status:                            │
│ Daily: $6.88 / $10.00 (69%) ⚠️              │
│ Monthly: $143.21 / $200.00 (72%)             │
│                                              │
│ 💡 This Session Insights:                    │
│ • 8 quick edits could use Haiku (-$2.10)    │
│ • Batch 3 similar queries (-$0.80)          │
│ Potential savings: $2.90                     │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

How It Helps

Before Cost Guard

月末看账单：$347
你："？？？怎么花了这么多？"
Agents: 🤷‍♂️

After Cost Guard

每天：预算 $10，已用 $7.23，收到提醒
周报：本周 $48，建议省 $12（用 Haiku 替代简单任务）
你：心中有数，主动优化

Model Pricing Reference

Model	Prompt ($/1M)	Completion ($/1M)	Best For
Claude Opus 4	$15	$75	Complex debug, architecture
Claude Sonnet 4	$3	$15	Most coding tasks
Claude Haiku 3.5	$0.80	$4	Simple edits, comments
GPT-4o	$2.50	$10	General tasks
GPT-4o-mini	$0.15	$0.60	Quick queries

Rule of thumb: Haiku for tasks you'd trust a junior dev, Opus for problems that need a principal engineer.

Why Not Other Solutions?

Solution	Problem
Check billing dashboard	After the fact, no prevention
Set API limits	Hard cutoffs, no visibility
Use cheaper models manually	Easy to forget
Agent Cost Guard	Prevention + visibility + recommendations

Configuration

.cost-guard.json:

{
  "dailyBudget": 10,
  "monthlyBudget": 200,
  "warnThreshold": 70,
  "stopThreshold": 100,
  "defaultModel": "claude-sonnet-4",
  "cheapModel": "claude-haiku-3.5",
  "premiumModel": "claude-opus-4"
}

Real Savings

Typical developer using AI agents 4 hours/day:

• Without optimization: ~$200/month
• With Cost Guard recommendations: ~$120/month
• Savings: $80/month = $960/year

Team scenario (10 devs): $9,600/year saved

Installation

# Option 1: Clone to skills directory
git clone https://github.com/aptratcn/agent-cost-guard.git ~/.agent-skills/

# Option 2: npx install (if using skills registry)
npx skills@latest add aptratcn/agent-cost-guard

# Option 3: Add to AGENTS.md
echo "- agent-cost-guard: ~/.agent-skills/agent-cost-guard" >> AGENTS.md

Related Projects

• context-mode — Context window optimization
• claude-mem — Session memory
• free-claude-code — Free Claude Code access

License

MIT

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Stop guessing. Start tracking. 📊