Your agents need a budget, not just a bill
Every agent platform bills you. Few give you a budget. The difference between a bill and a budget is a decision layer — here's how to build it.
Platforms are great at the bill — usage pages, invoices, alerts. They're almost universally bad at the budget — deciding, before the money moves, whether the spend may happen.
Bill vs budget
A bill is retrospective: what happened. A budget is prospective: what may happen. Alerts tell you after the damage; a spend cap prevents it. The platforms you run agents on bill you; the budget is the layer you add.
The three numbers
The ceiling — the most an agent may spend in a period. The velocity limit — how fast it may spend. The allowlist — who it may pay. Those three numbers are the budget; everything else is dashboard. Set it →