Needed to leave a full backlog drain running unattended:
- Run lock (flock): enabling the timer fired an immediate catch-up run
(Persistent=true) while a manual run was about to start; without a
lock the two would race on state.json and usage.jsonl.
- OBSIDIAN_API_URL accepts a comma-separated list, first reachable wins,
so the permanent address and an interim port-forward share one config.
- Fix: inline "# comments" in config.env were parsed into values, so
BUDGET_USD_PER_RUN=0.50 # ... crashed float(). The shipped
config.env.example had exactly that shape on several lines -- anyone
copying it would have hit the crash. A '#' inside a value (URL fragment)
still survives. Tested against both the example and a real config.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KF322NzozeaFjpgWvh4F4g
The user asked for usage to be monitored closely, and measuring it turned
up that most of the spend was avoidable.
Metering: every model call is appended to usage.jsonl with BILLED tokens
(modelUsage -- the visible `usage` turn undercounted by half) and the
CLI's list-price cost. `usage` reports 5h/24h/7d. Each call's cost is
estimated first and refused if it would cross the per-run or rolling 24h
budget, so budgets cannot be overshot. Removed --max-budget-usd: it
aborts after spending and discards the result ($0.26 lost in one call).
Cost, measured on one session ($0.057 -> $0.010, same summary content):
- alwaysThinkingEnabled=false: extended thinking was ~85% of output.
- DISABLE_PROMPT_CACHING=1: one-shot prompts were being written to the
1h cache at 2x input price.
- CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC=1: a hidden side request
re-read the whole prompt, doubling billed input (9,638 vs 4,663).
Summaries are cached until their note is written, so a vault failure
never re-pays; --prefetch summarizes while the vault is unreachable.
Offline tests (fake claude binary): budget refusal pre-flight, cache
reuse with zero calls, map-reduce, env/argv levers, billed-token ledger.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KF322NzozeaFjpgWvh4F4g
noconnorandClaude Opus 5