Budget and usage

Limits

Set them in createAi({ budget }); all fields are optional.

Option	Meaning	Default
dailyTokens	Site-wide cap per UTC day	none
visionWeight	Multiplier on tokens counted for calls that sent screenshots (providers under-report image cost)	5
perProjectCallsPerHour	Calls one project can start per rolling hour	50

The budget is counted from the usage recorded in the database, so it holds across all server instances combined. Checks run before a run starts and aren’t atomic, so concurrent calls can overshoot slightly. When a limit is hit the API answers 429 with Retry-After; at 100% of the daily cap new runs wait for the next UTC day. Cached results are still served and cost nothing.

Calls that fail after the provider reported usage still count: the provider billed them.

Alerts

Site admins get a sys:ai-budget notification the first time the daily total crosses 50%, 75%, 90% and 100% of dailyTokens, at most once per threshold per day even with several instances. Notifications use your configured channels (Slack, Teams or email).

Usage page

Admin → System → AI usage (/admin/ai) shows today’s position against the cap and the last 14 days by day and by profile, including failed calls.

Retention

Usage rows and project health digests are deleted after 90 days. Build triage is deleted with its build. A daily pass also marks runs stuck for more than 30 minutes as failed.

Keeping costs predictable

• Set dailyTokens in production. A small cap is cheap insurance.
• Leave screenshots off (vision: null, or no vision model) where they aren’t needed; they are the biggest cost multiplier.
• Prefer small, fast models for triage; they are given a tightly capped, structured input.
• Remember that triage results are cached by evidence, so repeated views are free.