Consumption limits

[brillout]

usage guard: start now?

Yes, that would be great.

If it's a quick-win, I'd say three limits:

• Session consumption limit
• 5h consumption limit
• 24h consumption limit

And, ideally, these limits are set as %:

• Session consumption limit (default value: 40% of daily limit)
• 5h consumption limit (default value: 60% of daily limit)
• Daily (24h) consumption limit (default value: 20% of weekly limit)

Note that the limits are measured either against the daily or weekly limit.

Also, these limits can be enabled/disabled. So two UI elements: a checkbox (disable/enable), and a progress bar (%).

I deliberately use the term "consumption limit" instead of "guard", because I think it's easier to understand? (I like the term guard in itslef, but it might be a bit ambigious depending on the context.)

[suleimansh]

Good news: we can have your bars, and they cost nothing.

Claude Code has a /usage command. We can run it and read the answer: session and weekly, percent used and reset time, exactly what your screenshot shows. It costs no tokens, and we never touch the user's login, because Claude Code asks Anthropic itself. Same source Traycer uses.

One correction to the spec: there's no daily limit. Claude measures a 5 hour session and a week, nothing per day. Your screenshot shows that too, session and weekly, no day. So your three limits become two:

• Session limit, default 40%
• Weekly limit, default 20%

Each meaning "pause background work once it has eaten this much of the window", with the checkbox and the bar you drew. Does that cover what your third limit was for?

Two small things I'll design around: the numbers come back as text, so a Claude Code update could reword them and we'd have to keep up. And Anthropic pushes back if you ask too often, so we ask on a slow timer and cache the answer.

[brillout]

Nice!

With daily limit I meant the (artificial) daily consumption limit set by the user.

[brillout]

pause background work

For the session limit, maybe also send a "Pause" instruction (with a new TODO.md entry Resume ${{ tf.session_name }}).

But let me think a bit more about it.

[brillout]

also send a "Pause" instruction (with a new TODO.md entry Resume ${{ tf.session_name }}).

Actually, I like it because it will auto-resume anyways. So I'd suggest we pause the current session(s) for all limits.

As always, we can make it post-MVP if it's complex to implement.

[suleimansh]

Ah, I misread you. I thought you meant a limit Anthropic enforces per day, and told you it doesn't exist. You meant a budget you set yourself. That's a different thing and it works.

So your chain, as I read it now:

• You allow, say, 20% of the week per day.
• One 5h stretch may use 60% of that day.
• One session may use 40% of that day.

All three can be measured against the weekly meter, which is the one real number we get: a day's budget is 20% of it, a 5h stretch 12%, one session 8%. So your three limits stand as you wrote them. Sorry for the noise.

One thing worth deciding: the meter counts everything on your account, including your own interactive Claude Code work, not only The Framework's. I'd keep it that way, since it's your subscription and it errs towards pausing early, but say so if you meant The Framework's own consumption only.

The read half is done and green (#522): we can ask Claude Code for the numbers, free. I'll wait for your pause thinking before building that part.

[suleimansh]

Our comments crossed, so to confirm: pause the current session(s) on all three limits, with the Resume entry. Agreed, and it's cheap.

Two things I still need from you:

1. The meter counts your own interactive Claude Code work too, not only The Framework's. I'd keep it that way, since it's your subscription and it errs towards pausing early. Ok?

2. What starts it again? A paused session leaves the Resume note behind, but something has to come back and read it. We do know when the window resets, so The Framework could wake itself up at that moment and pick it up on its own. Otherwise it resumes whenever you next run something, which is auto only if you already have the loop running.