Budget guardrails
Catch margin risk before it lands
Costara detects when AcmeOps AI’s model 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 surfaces the action needed to bring spend back under control.
Critical guardrail at 120%
Northstar Logistics exceeded 120% of monthly AI budget (294% of $5,600).
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
294.4%
$16,485 spent
against $5,600 allowance
Recommended action
Route 90% of Contract Analyzer traffic from Claude Opus 4.7 to Claude Sonnet 4.6
Route 90% 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 | $5,600 | +$16,485 | 294.4% | -17.8% | Unprofitable |
| BrightCart | $1,260 | +$1,348 | 106.9% | +67.9% | Budget reached |
| Redwood Finance | $1,950 | +$1,803 | 92.4% | +72.3% | Warning |
| Apex Legal | $840 | +$710 | 84.5% | +74.6% | Warning |
| Atlas Health | $5,600 | +$4,200 | 75% | +70% | Healthy |
Guardrail status by feature
A feature is flagged when it drives cost for a tenant that is warning, budget reached, or critical.
| Feature | Drives cost in | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Contract Analyzer | Northstar Logistics, Apex Legal | Critical |
| Document Q&A | Redwood Finance, Apex Legal | Warning |
| Research Assistant | No tenants over 80% of budget | Healthy |
| Summarization | No tenants over 80% of budget | Healthy |
| AI Support Copilot | BrightCart | Budget reached |
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.