pinch

know what your agent costs — per session, per model, per day.

openclaw plugin that tracks every token and dollar your agent spends. no accounts, no cloud, no surprises.

$ pinch_check

today: $4.82 (69% of $7.00 budget)
this week: $18.40
this month: $52.10

by model:
  claude-opus-4-6    $3.40   71%
  claude-sonnet-4-6  $1.20   25%
  claude-haiku-3.5   $0.22    4%

install

openclaw plugins install @safetnsr/pinch

no config needed. pinch starts tracking immediately.

open the dashboard at http://localhost:3334.

update

openclaw plugins update pinch

then restart the gateway for the new version to load.

uninstall

openclaw plugins uninstall pinch

what you get

agent tools

three tools the agent can call directly:

pinch_check — current spend across today / week / month, with model breakdown

pinch_breakdown — top sessions by cost, useful for spotting expensive crons or heartbeats

top sessions today:
  1. readme rewrite         $0.85
  2. twitter cron (8 runs)  $0.72
  3. heartbeats (48 runs)   $0.42

pinch_budget — budget status with projection and optimization hints

daily: $4.82 / $7.00 (69%) — on track
projected: $6.20 today

suggestion: heartbeats cost $0.42/day — consider extending interval

dashboard

one page at http://localhost:3334. kpi strip, budget bar, 7d/30d/90d trend chart, breakdown by model/type/session, latest runs. auto-refreshes every 30s. dark mode. 12KB single HTML file.

budget alerts

alerts fire in your chat at 50%, 80%, and 100% of budget. deduplicated per day.

config

everything is optional. add a pinch block to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json:

{
  "plugins": {
    "entries": {
      "pinch": {
        "enabled": true,
        "config": {
          "budget": {
            "daily": 7.00,
            "weekly": 35.00,
            "monthly": 100.00,
            "enforcement": "warn",
            "alertAt": [0.5, 0.8, 1.0]
          },
          "dashboard": { "enabled": true, "port": 3334 },
          "pricing": {
            "my-local-model": { "input": 0, "output": 0 }
          },
          "retentionDays": 90
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

enforcement: "warn" logs only · "throttle" slows requests · "block" halts new sessions.

budget alerts — to receive alerts in telegram or another channel, add:

"alertDelivery": { "channel": "telegram", "target": "<your-chat-id>" }

how it works

cost resolution order:

1. provider-reported cost from api response (most accurate)
2. calculated from built-in pricing table
3. user config override
4. unknown model — tokens tracked, cost = $0

model name normalization:

• strips provider prefixes: anthropic/claude-opus-4 → claude-opus-4
• strips date suffixes: claude-opus-4-20250514 → claude-opus-4
• resolves aliases: claude-3-5-haiku → claude-haiku-3.5

storage — local only, ~/.openclaw/data/pinch/. raw jsonl records (90d), daily/weekly/monthly aggregates (forever). ~4MB after 2 years of heavy use.

pricing: ships with 25+ models across 8 providers. to add or update:

{
  "pricing": {
    "new-model": { "input": 1.00, "output": 5.00 }
  }
}

or open a PR — pricing PRs merge fast.

development

git clone https://github.com/safetnsr/pinch
cd pinch
npm install
npm run build
npm test

license

MIT