The real AI tax is the bill you do not see coming

A few weeks into shipping with AI in the loop, I noticed something annoying: the bill was not the problem. The surprise was.

You think you are testing a prompt, then suddenly you are paying for background loops, retries, experiments, and all the little token leaks that never show up in your code review.

That is why I built TokenBar.

I wanted a dead simple way to see token cost in real time, right in the menu bar, before the bill gets weird. Not after. Not in a dashboard I open once a week. Right there while I am working.

If you are building with AI and you care about cost visibility, TokenBar is for you.

TokenBar: https://tokenbar.site