I built TokenBar after a surprise OpenAI bill made me realize I had no idea where tokens were going

Last month I got one of those AI invoices that makes you open the usage page and squint.

The annoying part was not that I used tokens.
It was that I had almost no visibility while I was actually building.

I was jumping between apps, prompts, and models, and the cost only became obvious after the damage was done.

So I built TokenBar for macOS.

It sits in the menu bar and shows token usage in real time while I work, so I can catch:

• prompts that are way bigger than I thought

• model switches that quietly get expensive

• workflows that look fine in a demo but wreck margins in production

I made it because I wanted a simple answer to one question:

"is this prompt actually worth what it costs me right now?"

If you ship AI products, I’m curious:

1. where do surprise token bills usually come from for you?
2. do you track usage while building, or only after the fact?

TokenBar: https://tokenbar.site