The first time my AI bill scared me into building TokenBar
Dev.to AI
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Generative AI
AI Regulation
A few months ago I opened my AI bill and did the dumb double-take every solo de knows. Not because I had a huge team. Because the cost was invisible while I was building. That was the whole problem. I could feel the products moving, but I could not feel what each conversation, prompt, or workflow was costing me in real time. So I built TokenBar. It is a tiny macOS menu bar app that makes LLM spend visible while you work. Not a dashboard you check later. Not a spreadsheet you avoid. Just constant cost awareness right where the work happens.