Budget guardrails
Catch margin risk before it lands
Costara detects when AcmeOps AI AI usage crosses budget and margin limits, then triggers a recommended action on routing, allowance, or pricing.
Catch margin risk early
Fire the moment AI usage crosses the planned ceiling.
Force a decision
Surface the triggered tenant, feature, and model in one alert.
Recommend the action
Routing change, allowance change, or pricing change.
Threshold reference
Three explicit thresholds. Each one fires its own guardrail.
80%
Warning
Early signal. On track to exhaust the monthly AI budget.
100%
Budget reached
Planned ceiling crossed. Any further usage is unbudgeted spend.
120%
Critical overrun
Action required. Routing, allowance, or pricing change.
Triggered guardrails
Tenants over 120% of AI budget this month. Each fires the action that protects gross margin.
Critical guardrail at 120%
Northstar Logistics exceeded 120% of monthly AI budget (370% of $3,000).
Contract Analyzer is the reason. Most of this cost comes from Claude Opus 4.7 running inside Contract Analyzer for Northstar Logistics.
Northstar Logistics budget used
369.7%
$11,090 spent
against $3,000 allowance
Recommended action
Route 80% of Contract Analyzer traffic from Claude Opus 4.7 to Claude Sonnet 4.6
Route 80% of Northstar Logistics's Contract Analyzer traffic from Claude Opus 4.7 to Claude Sonnet 4.6.
Guardrail status by tenant
Sorted by budget used. The most over-budget tenants surface first.
| Tenant | Budget | AI cost | Budget used | Margin % | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northstar Logistics | $3,000 | +$11,090 | 369.7% | -23.2% | Unprofitable |
| Apex Legal | $900 | +$820 | 91.1% | +70.7% | Warning |
| Redwood Finance | $2,000 | +$1,600 | 80% | +75.4% | Warning |
| BrightCart | $1,500 | +$1,040 | 69.3% | +75.2% | Healthy |
| Atlas Health | $4,500 | +$2,600 | 57.8% | +81.4% | Healthy |
Guardrail status by feature
A feature flips when it dominates a tenant whose budget guardrail has fired.
| Feature | Drives cost in | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Contract Analyzer | Northstar Logistics, Apex Legal | Critical |
| Document Q&A | Redwood Finance | Warning |
| Research Assistant | No tenants over 80% of budget | Healthy |
| Summarization | No tenants over 80% of budget | Healthy |
| AI Support Copilot | No tenants over 80% of budget | Healthy |
Next step
Take action on the triggered guardrail.
The dashboard shows the full margin picture. The simulator runs the recommended routing change and projects before and after gross margin. The demo walks through the full story.