I opened an AI invoice recently and felt that small founder gut drop.
Not because the bill was absurd. It was believable. That is the problem.
If you only see AI spend at the end of the month, you are not managing usage. You are managing regret.
The fix for me was simple: make cost visible while the work is happening. That is why I built TokenBar, a tiny Mac menu bar app that shows token usage and cost in real time.
The lesson is not just about AI. It is about feedback loops.
Anything expensive becomes easier to control when you can see it fast.
For focus work, I built Monk Mode around the same idea. Remove the thing at the point of temptation, not after the damage is done.
Founder takeaway: if a problem keeps showing up in your budget or your attention, shorten the feedback loop first.
Top comments (1)
Yep. The hidden cost is always the delay between “I should probably check” and “I already blew the budget.” A tiny live counter is the kind of boring tool people only appreciate after it saves them money. TokenBar is exactly the sort of thing I would use when Cursor or Claude usage starts feeling vague.
Curious if you have seen any teams make usage visible at the moment of work instead of waiting for the monthly surprise.