I kept opening bills and thinking the same thing: why did this cost jump so fast?
It was not because the models were magical or because I was doing something wildly wrong. It was because I did not have a clear enough view of what I was spending while I was spending it.
That was the spark for TokenBar.
I wanted a tiny Mac app that sits there, shows token usage in real time, and makes the cost visible before the bill becomes a surprise.
The lesson for me was simple: most expensive mistakes start as invisible ones.
If you are building with AI, the bill is only part of the problem. The real problem is drift. A prompt gets longer. A workflow gets noisier. A prototype becomes a habit. Suddenly your tool is doing a lot more than you expected.
TokenBar is my way of keeping that honest.
I am still shipping it as a solo dev, which means every feature has to earn its place. No bloat. No theater. Just enough visibility to help me make better calls.
If you have built something similar, or if your AI costs ever surprised you, I would love to hear how you caught it.
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