Alerts beat dashboards
A dashboard only helps if you look at it. An alert finds you. For an agent that runs headless or on a schedule, alerts are the difference between a $2 surprise and a $60 one.
Two alert levels that cover most cases
- Daily ceiling: notify when today’s spend passes a set amount — pair it with the daily spend cap that actually stops the run.
- Single-task ceiling: notify when one task costs more than your typical day — the classic signature of a loop.
Where to send them
Send alerts where you already look: email for daily summaries, chat for the urgent single-task threshold. If a whole team runs agents, one shared channel plus team permissions keeps everyone aware without everyone having console access.
What to do when an alert fires
- Open the task’s Deep Dive trace and look for repeated steps.
- Check the token breakdown to see which step burned the budget.
- Stop or trim the task, then adjust the prompt or the budget.
- Log the incident — a recurring overspend is a policy problem, not bad luck.