Budget governor

The governor is a monthly guard that the operator of ZeroLog sets, not you. It adds up what the whole service spends on models this month. Once that total passes a threshold of the monthly budget, paid requests move to a cheaper model, so chats keep going instead of stopping outright. It is off until the operator turns it on and sets a monthly budget. The cheaper model is the one the operator named, or else the cheapest one available.

What the budget governor does to a paid requestThe operator can switch on a monthly budget guard. For each paid request it first checks the optional hard stop at the full budget, which refuses the request. Otherwise it compares this month's service-wide model spend with the threshold: below it the request is answered by the model you picked, past it a cheaper model answers and the downgrade is logged with its reason.yesnonoyesA paid requestfor the model you pickedHard stop on andmonthly budget used up?Request refusedService-wide spend thismonthpast the threshold?Answered by the modelyou pickedAnswered by a cheaper modelthe chat carries onDowngrade loggedwith the reason
Past the threshold a paid request is answered by a cheaper model and logged; refusal happens only if the operator also switched on the hard stop.
Diagram as text
  1. A paid request arrives for the model you picked. Free models are not touched.
  2. If the operator switched on a hard stop and the monthly budget is used up, the request is refused.
  3. Otherwise the governor compares the whole service's model spend this month with the threshold of the monthly budget.
  4. Below the threshold, the model you picked answers.
  5. Past it, a cheaper model answers instead (the one the operator named, or else the cheapest available) and the chat carries on.
  6. Each downgrade is logged with the reason.
The month, watched as a whole

Past the monthly threshold

The model you picked

A cheaper model

Every downgrade leaves a line

The governor writes down each downgrade with the reason behind it. So when an answer comes back looking different from the one you expected, there is a line that explains it.

What it does not do

It does not watch a single run or measure how fast a run spends, and you cannot set or see it from your account. Your own limit is your credit: at zero, paid models stop. See Spend limits.

How unattended runs behave: /goal and /ultracode.