Know what each agent costs.
Your agents run every day.
By the end of the month you want to know what each one cost.
Give every agent its own budget and read it once a week.
This guide shows how to set that up.
1. Cost is a number you can read
Treat cost like any other thing you track. Each agent gets its own line.
Your agent costs are not one big bill. They are a few small lines, one per agent.
When you can see a line, you can manage it.
2. One budget per agent, set before it starts
Pick a budget word before the agent runs: low, normal or high.
Write it next to the agent's job. A reporting agent might be low. A research agent might be high.
The budget is a plan, not a measurement. You adjust it as you learn.
3. Match the job to the model
Small jobs do not need the biggest model.
Sorting, formatting and checking a list are small jobs. Use a small model for them.
Save the large model for work that needs real thinking.
Write the choice down with the budget, so you can see why an agent costs what it does.
4. Keep private and repeat work local
Work you do over and over, and work that holds private files, can stay on a machine you own.
That is a choice about control first. See the guide on running agents on your own hardware.
You decide each time, task by task.
5. Put a stop on the loop
An agent that repeats a step should have a limit on repeats.
Set a cap per run: so many steps, then it stops and asks.
A cap turns a long run into a short one you can read in the record. See the guide on the agent activity log.
6. Read it once a week
Take a few minutes on the same day each week. Ask three questions.
Which agent used the most?
Did it earn it?
Does its budget word need to change?
Write the answers in one line per agent. See the guide on agent approvals for where a person decides.
A weekly check can look like this:
- Writer: on budget, drafted the week's posts
- Researcher: over, went deep on one topic
- Checker: under, sorted the list
7. Check it
Pick one agent and look at its week.
Compare what it did to the budget word you gave it.
If the two match, leave it. If not, change the word or the job.
One agent, one week, a few minutes.
