agentcap

Hard dollar budgets + zombie-loop detection for AI agent runs. A provider-agnostic SDK that stops the spend before it happens — not a dashboard that shows you the bill after a flaky tool burned $400 overnight.

agentcap wraps your OpenAI-compatible client in one line. Before every model call it estimates the cost and refuses to exceed a hard cap, and it hashes repeated call/tool cycles to catch agents stuck in zombie retry loops — tripping a circuit breaker that kills the run with a typed exception. Local-first, no account, bring your own keys.

Why

Observability tools (LangSmith, Langfuse, Helicone) tell you a run cost $380 after it happened. Framework limits (max_iterations) count steps, not dollars, and evaporate the moment you switch frameworks. agentcap is the missing piece: an in-process, pre-call brake that's provider-agnostic and dead simple to adopt.

Install

pip install agentcap-guard              # from PyPI (import name stays `agentcap`)

Or from source:

pip install -e .            # core, zero required deps
pip install -e ".[extras]" # + tiktoken (accurate token counts) + rich

Note: the PyPI distribution name is agentcap-guard (the bare agentcap name was already taken), but the import name and CLI command are still agentcap — pip install agentcap-guard then import agentcap.

Python 3.11+.

Quick start

Wrap any OpenAI-compatible client:

from openai import OpenAI
from agentcap import guard

client = guard(OpenAI(), budget=5.00)   # hard $5 cap for this run

# use it exactly like the normal client — reads pass through untouched
client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4o",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "hello"}],
)
# a call that would push spend over $5 raises BudgetExceeded *before* sending.
# the same model/messages repeated past the loop threshold raises LoopDetected.

Works with OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, DeepSeek, Alibaba Qwen (DashScope), and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — agentcap only needs client.chat.completions.create.

Or wrap a whole run (for frameworks / custom loops that aren't a plain client):

import agentcap

with agentcap.budget(2.50) as cap:
    while not done:
        cap.check(model="claude-opus-4-1", prompt_text=prompt,   # pre-call brake
                  step_signature={"model": m, "messages": msgs}) # loop guard
        usage = call_model(prompt)
        cap.record_usage("claude-opus-4-1",
                         usage.prompt_tokens, usage.completion_tokens)

See it stop a runaway agent (no API key needed)

python examples/demo_budget_stop.py

A flaky-tool agent that would loop forever on expensive calls, stopped hard at a $0.50 cap. Then inspect what happened:

agentcap runs                # recent runs: spend, budget, outcome
agentcap show <run_id>       # full event timeline, with the call that tripped it

Run it against your real Qwen/OpenAI key:

set DASHSCOPE_API_KEY=sk-...     # your Qwen key
python examples/demo_real_qwen.py

Use it in an autonomous agent loop

The whole point: when you let an agent run itself in a while loop, a hard budget + loop guard makes "burned $400 overnight" and "stuck retrying the same tool forever" structurally impossible — one cap.check(...) per step:

import agentcap

with agentcap.budget(5.00) as cap:          # hard $5 ceiling for this run
    while not done:
        cap.check(model="gpt-4o",            # pre-call brake: raises BudgetExceeded
                  prompt_text=prompt,        #   before sending if it would exceed,
                  step_signature=step)       #   and LoopDetected on a zombie loop
        resp = call_model(prompt)
        cap.record_usage("gpt-4o",
                         resp.usage.prompt_tokens,
                         resp.usage.completion_tokens)

See the full, runnable demo (no API key needed) showing both a budget stop and a zombie-loop stop:

python examples/demo_agent_loop.py

CLI

How it works

• Pre-call cost estimation. Prompt tokens (via tiktoken if installed, else a conservative char-based estimate) + a conservative max-output assumption × a per-model price (pricing.toml). If spent + estimated > budget, the call is aborted before sending.
• Reconciliation. After each call, real token usage from the response updates the running total — so the budget is enforced against truth, not just estimates.
• Loop detection. Each step's (model, messages) / (tool, args) signature is hashed; if the same hash repeats past the threshold within a rolling window, that's a zombie loop. An allowlist exempts legitimately-repeating calls (polling, pagination).
• Circuit breaker. On budget-exceed or loop-detected, the breaker latches: a typed exception (BudgetExceeded / LoopDetected) is raised and all further calls through the wrapped client re-raise it. One hard stop.
• Audit log. Append-only JSONL (one line per event) is the source of truth; a SQLite roll-up powers agentcap runs. State lives in .agentcap/ (override with AGENTCAP_HOME).

Pricing table

pricing.toml is data, not code — edit it, or point agentcap at your own copy with AGENTCAP_PRICING=/path/to/pricing.toml. Unknown models fall back to a deliberately high default so costs over-estimate rather than silently under-count. agentcap doctor warns when a run used a model missing from the table.

Status

MVP. Core (budget + loops + breaker + audit + CLI) is implemented and tested offline. Not yet built: the HTTP sidecar proxy for non-Python stacks, the Anthropic native wrapper, and the hosted Team tier (shared budgets + Slack alerts). See ../pain-radar/specs/02-agent-budget-guardrails/spec.md for the full plan.

License

MIT.