How does the skill estimate remaining costs?

It calculates the mean cost across all completed phases in your current session and multiplies that average by the number of steps remaining in your specific workflow type (e.g., Research, Review, or Debate).

What is the budget profile suggestion?

If projected costs exceed a specific threshold, the skill suggests switching to OCTO_PROFILE=budget, which reconfigures the system to use cheaper models and fewer agents to reduce spend.

Why does it say I need 2+ steps for a projection?

To ensure accuracy, the skill requires at least two data points to establish a reliable average cost per step. With only one step completed, it displays actual spend only to avoid misleading estimates.

How do I set a maximum budget for a task?

You can set the OCTO_BUDGET_CEILING environment variable. The skill will compare your projected total against this value and issue a warning if you are expected to exceed it.

Cost Projections & Budget Guard

Name: Cost Projections & Budget Guard
Author: nyldn

bynyldn

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3,216

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Analíticas y Monitorización

Monitors real-time AI spending and projects total workflow costs based on per-phase performance data.

This skill provides essential financial visibility into AI-driven coding tasks by analyzing per-phase averages from completed work to estimate total project costs. It automatically tracks spending, projects remaining expenses based on workflow complexity, and displays a live budget status in the Claude Code HUD. By integrating customizable budget ceilings and smart profile suggestions, it empowers developers to maintain strict control over LLM API expenditures and switch to more affordable model profiles when costs trend high.

Características Principales

013,216 GitHub stars

02Customizable budget ceiling warnings with overrun alerts

03Smart profile suggestions to switch to cost-optimized models

04Step-based averaging for high-accuracy estimation across different workflow types

05Real-time cost projection based on historical phase metrics

06HUD statusline integration for continuous spending visibility

Casos de Uso

01Identifying cost-heavy development phases to optimize model routing

02Managing API expenditures during high-token agentic coding tasks

03Setting strict financial guardrails for automated research and debugging sessions

Características Principales

013,216 GitHub stars

02Customizable budget ceiling warnings with overrun alerts

03Smart profile suggestions to switch to cost-optimized models

04Step-based averaging for high-accuracy estimation across different workflow types

05Real-time cost projection based on historical phase metrics

06HUD statusline integration for continuous spending visibility

Casos de Uso

01Identifying cost-heavy development phases to optimize model routing

02Managing API expenditures during high-token agentic coding tasks

03Setting strict financial guardrails for automated research and debugging sessions