Most teams don’t lose money on model choice first — they lose it on invisible token usage.
Three quick fixes:
- Track token use per workflow in real time
- Flag sudden prompt/context spikes
- Cut bloated system prompts before changing models
If you can see spend as you build, optimization gets way easier.
Top comments (3)
If anyone here wants a concrete baseline: track spend per workflow, not per model. We started catching the expensive prompts immediately once token telemetry sat in the menu bar during coding.
Quick add: if anyone is debugging API-bill spikes, track input vs output tokens separately by workflow. Most surprise spend is input/context bloat, not generation.
If you are building with Claude or GPT APIs, track token + dollar drift while coding not after billing closes. That one habit has been the fastest margin fix for us.