Why I Built TokenBar: the hidden cost of AI is the one nobody tracks

I built TokenBar because AI usage is invisible until the bill lands. If you use Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, or any token-based workflow all day, the real pain is not the price per token. It is the slow leak. A few prompts here, a few retries there, and suddenly your "cheap" workflow is burning real money. TokenBar is a tiny macOS menu bar app that shows your live token usage so you can: see what each task is actually costing catch runaway prompts before they get expensive compare tools and workflows in real time make smarter decisions without opening another dashboard It is a $5 lifetime app.