Every AI bill has the same shape: you find out what it cost after it cost it. The meter runs during the work, the invoice explains it later, and the only budget control is the sinking feeling.
Nika moves the question to before. The second verdict nika check prints, right under the plan, is the cost line:
nika: v1workflow: cost-probemodel: mistral/mistral-smalltasks: - id: bounded infer: { prompt: "one word", max_tokens: 200 } - id: loop depends_on: [bounded] agent: { prompt: "say done", tools: ["nika:read"], max_turns: 3, max_tokens_total: 4000 }outputs: out: ${{ tasks.loop.output }} ✔ COST $0.0025 – $0.0025 worst-case ceiling bounded mistral/mistral-small ≤200 tk $0.0001 loop mistral/mistral-small ≤4000 tk $0.0024That is not an estimate of what the run will probably cost. It is a worst-case ceiling, computed from the declared budgets and the provider's catalog price, per task, before a single token moves. The file caps the spend; the audit does the multiplication.
Three details make the line honest rather than decorative:
Each verb budgets in its own shape. An infer caps one generation: max_tokens. An agent caps the whole loop: max_tokens_total, because a loop that budgets per-call could still run forever on your card. The two knobs differ exactly where the execution models differ (the anatomy post walks all four).
Unbounded is a named state, not a silence. Drop the budgets and the line does not guess: it prints UNBOUNDED, names the missing knob, and hints the fix, task by task. Same for a local model with no catalog price. The audit refuses to invent a number it cannot stand behind; it tells you which number is missing instead.
Waste is caught before it is spent. Leave an infer whose output nothing reads and the audit raises a dead-spend hint: every token that generation would burn is unread by construction. It is a strange kind of luxury, being told about the pointless spend while it is still zero dollars.
And when a workflow has no inference at all, pure exec and invoke, the line says $0.00 and means it, because the only things that cost tokens are the verbs that think.
The pattern is the site's whole thesis applied to money. The plan is reviewable before it runs; the permissions are enforced before the effect; and the spend is bounded before the meter starts. A file you can read, with a bill you can read first.