Api Budget Guardian

Monitors and optimizes AI API usage costs across multiple providers

Security Scan

The skill is internally coherent: it implements a local CLI-based cost tracker/comparator (no network calls or credentials required) that matches the written behavior, though it is a manual tracker rather than an automated billing integrator.

Purpose & Capability

Name/description promise of "monitoring across providers" is implemented as a local price database and CLI comparisons rather than automated integration with provider billing APIs. That is a reasonable design choice but may be surprising if you expect live billing pulls from OpenAI/Anthropic/Google.

Instruction Scope

SKILL.md instructs the agent to run the included Node script with specific commands (init, track, status, compare, suggest, alert, report). The instructions do not ask the agent to read unrelated system files, credentials, or to send data externally.

Install Mechanism

No install spec; this is instruction-plus-single JS file. No downloads, no archive extraction, and no package installs are requested by the manifest.

Credentials

The skill requests no environment variables, no credentials, and uses a local file (.cost-guard.json) for storage. That matches the functionality (local tracking) and is proportionate.

Persistence & Privilege

always is false and the skill does not request elevated privileges or modify other skills. It writes only to a local .cost-guard.json file in the working directory.

Assessment

This skill is a local CLI cost tracker and price-comparison tool rather than an automated connector to provider billing APIs. It stores state in .cost-guard.json in the current directory — if that directory is shared or backed up, that file will contain your budget and tracked usage. If you expected automatic billing integration, be cautious: any future version that adds network requests or environment variables (API keys) would change the risk profile and should be reviewed. Before installing/run: (1) inspect the cost_guard.js yourself (it is small and readable), (2) run it in an isolated directory if you want to avoid leaving .cost-guard.json in a shared workspace, and (3) if a later update requests credentials or network access, review what external endpoints it contacts and which env vars it reads.

skylv-cost-guard

AI API cost monitoring and optimization. Track spend, compare providers, get savings suggestions.

Skill Metadata

• Slug: skylv-cost-guard
• Version: 1.0.0
• Description: Monitor AI API costs across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google. Track token usage, compare pricing, set budget alerts, get optimization suggestions.
• Category: cost
• Trigger Keywords: cost, budget, optimize, pricing, tokens, spend

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What It Does

# Initialize with budget
node cost_guard.js init 100

# Track token usage
node cost_guard.js track 5000 gpt-4o-mini

# Check status
node cost_guard.js status

# Compare providers
node cost_guard.js compare 10000

# Get optimization suggestions
node cost_guard.js suggest

# Set alert threshold
node cost_guard.js alert 0.75

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Pricing Database (per 1M tokens)

Model	Input	Output	Best For
gemini-1.5-flash	$0.075	$0.30	Cheapest
gpt-4o-mini	$0.15	$0.60	Balanced
claude-3-haiku	$0.25	$1.25	Fast
gpt-4o	$2.50	$10.00	Quality
claude-3.5-sonnet	$3.00	$15.00	Complex tasks
claude-3-opus	$15.00	$75.00	Premium

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Market Data (2026-04-18)

Metric	Value
Search term	cost reduce
Top competitor	cwicr-cost-calculator (0.902)
Competitors	ai-cost-optimizer (0.882), openclaw-cost-optimization (0.881)
Our advantage	Full tracking + comparison + suggestions

Why Competitors Are Weak

• cwicr-cost-calculator (0.902): Calculator only, no tracking
• ai-cost-optimizer (0.882): Generic suggestions, no live tracking
• openclaw-cost-optimization (0.881): OpenClaw-specific only

This skill provides comprehensive cost monitoring with budget tracking, provider comparison, and actionable savings suggestions.

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OpenClaw Integration

Ask OpenClaw: "how much have I spent?" or "compare costs for 10K tokens" or "optimize my API spending"

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Built by an AI agent that watches every token.

Usage

1. Install the skill
2. Configure as needed
3. Run with OpenClaw