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Cost tracking

Arclasp can record LLM token usage and estimate cost when a governed event supplies supported model/token metadata. This is not universal provider billing telemetry. It is governance over the LLM usage evidence Arclasp actually receives.

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What can be recorded

Supported governed event payloads can include fields such as:
  • model identifier;
  • input / prompt tokens;
  • output / completion tokens;
  • total tokens.
When the model and token split can be priced from the backend’s configured pricing table, Arclasp can compute an estimated USD cost and include it in governance state.

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Manual instrumentation

record_agent_action() does not have a separate action-level metadata argument. Put supported token/model fields in the governed payload.

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Unknown and unpriceable cost

Arclasp does not silently treat unknown cost as $0. Current behavior distinguishes cases such as:
  • a recognized model with explicit input/output token split;
  • a recognized model with insufficient token split for the configured pricing rule;
  • an unknown model.
When budget governance requires cost confidence, an unknown or unpriceable state can require approval. When budget governance is disabled, Arclasp can record an unpriceable state without fabricating zero cost.

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Monthly budget governance

The organization budget is governance over recorded estimated cost in the current UTC calendar month. When newly recorded usage would cross the configured budget, the current backend can return require_approval. That is not a hard cap in the LLM provider’s billing system. Arclasp does not control what OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or another provider ultimately charges you.

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Dashboard

The cost surface can show recorded estimate summaries and the configured organization budget. Use it to understand governed workload trends, not as a replacement for your provider invoice.

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Framework integrations

Some framework callbacks expose token/model metadata that Arclasp can record. Coverage depends on what the framework emits and what the adapter captures. Do not assume universal automatic LLM-call observation across integrations. In particular, the MCP integration is primarily a governed tool-invocation boundary and should not be described as universal LLM token capture.

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Receipts

Completed Chain Records can include cumulative cost estimates when the underlying governed events supplied supported token/model evidence. Those values are internal governance/accounting evidence, not provider billing records.

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Security interpretation

Cost anomalies can be useful operational signals. They do not, by themselves, diagnose prompt injection, compromise, or any other security root cause.