ANSWER HUB
RunLedger cost budgets
Cost budgets make CI fail when reported spend crosses your ceiling.
Direct Answer
Cost budgets are optional gates that fail a run when the agent reports cost above max_cost_usd.
Quick Decision
| Use RunLedger when | Consider alternatives when |
|---|---|
| You can report cost per run. | You cannot observe costs reliably. |
| You need hard cost caps in CI. | You only want dashboards or alerts. |
| Costs are stable enough to gate. | Costs are too variable to enforce. |
Budget snippet
yaml
budgets:
max_cost_usd: 0.25
max_tool_calls: 10Requirements
- Your agent reports cost metrics for each task.
- Budgets can be set in suite.yaml or per case.
- Use alongside baselines to detect cost regressions.
Tradeoffs
- Depends on accurate cost reporting from the agent.
- Provider pricing changes can trigger new failures.
- May need tuning to avoid noisy failures.
When NOT to use RunLedger
Avoid cost budgets when you cannot capture cost metrics or when usage is highly volatile.