I Used 89% of an $18 AI Plan in 3 Days. Here's the Cost-Tracking Setup I Built Next

EDITOR NOTE (delete after your own rewrite): drafted with AI assistance - Medium requires disclosure unless you substantially rewrite it.

An $18 monthly AI plan should last a month. Mine was 89% gone in three days, and I couldn't explain a third of the spend.

This is the post-mortem: what happened, the audit method that found it, the cost table I now use before every batch, and the guardrails that keep my agents from doing it again. If you run AI agents, automations or a content pipeline at home or at work, you can copy all of it.

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