Tag · 11 posts
Explainer
The AI Spend Blast-Radius Checklist for Production TeamsSeven failure modes, a five-minute scorecard, and the controls that shrink the maximum cost of an unattended failure.
How to Run an AI Spend Incident ReviewA blameless review template with a one-page incident record, timeline reconstruction, failure chain analysis, corrective actions, and a monthly prevention cadence.
How to Set an API-Key Spend Ceiling Without Breaking ProductionA spend ceiling is only useful if it contains a failure without causing an outage. Scope keys, choose a ceiling from a failure budget, and test the stop path before you need it.
The No-Proxy Buyer's Guide to LLM Cost MonitoringLLM cost monitoring describes several different products. Choose the job before the tool: a decision framework, vendor questions, and where each architecture fits.
OpenAI Spend Alerts: What the Dashboard Catches, What It Cannot, and a Safer BackstopOpenAI's built-in spend controls are a sensible first line. The gap is between a notification that tells you something happened and a hard control that stops further traffic.
A Production Checklist for Retry Loops That Call LLMsEvery LLM retry re-sends a large context. Four limits, idempotency, and agent-specific controls to keep retries from becoming a cost incident.
Why Proxy-Based LLM Observability Is Not the Only Cost-Control ArchitectureGateway proxies and billing-API monitoring solve different problems. Here are the four layers of cost control and the decision questions that determine which you need.
What a Read-Only Billing Credential Can—and Cannot—DoRead-only is a useful security principle, not a magic phrase. An evaluation checklist for monitoring credentials: what to ask before connecting any cost monitor.
The 7 Failure Modes Behind Runaway AI Bills—and the Circuit Breakers for EachA valid key, a valid request, and a missing guardrail are enough for a runaway bill. Seven failure modes, each with a limit, a signal, and a stop mechanism.
Anthropic, OpenAI, Bedrock, and Vercel: Where Billing Data Arrives Too LateBilling data is essential for cost control, but providers differ on refresh timing, control types, and what the data can and cannot do in an incident.
Why we poll instead of proxyModelBrake polls provider usage APIs every 15 minutes instead of proxying your traffic. Here is why, and what we trade off.