Yeah, and how we build—and what we surface operationally—matters as well.

I run several AI-based products, and I’ve moved almost entirely to agentic coding, so this is a huge concern for me. One thing that has helped in the coding realm is separating planning from execution: I use a stronger, more expensive model for architecture, research, and difficult decisions, then hand the implementation work to cheaper agents where the task is more constrained.

On the product side, I treat token usage and costs like any other production resource. We record usage by request, user, feature, and model, surface it in admin dashboards, and set budgets and hard cutoffs.

Alerts are useful, but automatic limits matter more—especially as a small business guy so a 2 AM loop doesn't bankrupt me :)