Usage and limits

Sixb records model usage across generation, conversations, AI workflow steps, and embeddings. View consumption in Atlas and set monthly limits for your project or specific users and groups.

View usage

Open AI usage in Atlas to see token usage and costs. Filter by date, provider, or model, and open Model calls to inspect individual calls.

Usage and cost depend on what the provider reports and the available pricing. Missing values remain unknown rather than being counted as zero.

Keep the workers running so accounting can recover from temporary storage failures. sixb dev and automatic sixb worker-group selection include the required worker. If you select worker types explicitly, include agent, even for projects that only use decision or embedding models. Accounting recovery does not require a sandbox.

Set a monthly limit

In AI usage, choose Add limit under Monthly usage limits:

1. Choose the project, user, service account, or group the limit applies to.
2. Select Cost or Tokens and enter the monthly amount.
3. Choose Add limit to save it.

Limits reset at the start of each UTC calendar month. Editing a limit does not reset consumption. Every applicable limit must allow a call before it starts. Once a limit is reached, further calls are blocked.

Limits control whether calls can start. They are not hard caps on a provider's bill, because a call's actual usage can exceed its estimate. Use maxOutputTokens to bound the output of an individual call.

Embeddings

Vector indexing and semantic search use the same usage accounting and limits. A completed model call can count toward usage even if its result cannot be saved. Calling a provider's embed() method directly bypasses these controls.

Automatic projection indexing uses the project's budget. If the budget is exhausted, embedding generation waits while projections continue updating objects.

Permissions

Grant access to view usage and manage limits through a role:

import { agent, can, defineRole } from "@sixb/core"
import { financeAdmins } from "../groups/finance-admins"

export const aiUsageOperators = defineRole("ai-usage.operators", {
  grantedTo: [financeAdmins],
  grants: [can.observe(agent.usage), can.manage(agent.usage)],
})

can.observe(agent.usage) allows viewing usage and limits. can.manage(agent.usage) allows creating and changing limits. Permission to use the agent does not include either grant.