Budget

aide enforces a token budget per task. When the budget runs out, the task stops — no surprise bills.

Configuration

[budget]
tokens = "100k"
max_retries = 3

• tokens — maximum tokens for the entire task (all retries combined)
• max_retries — how many times claude -p can be invoked for a single task

How it works

1. aide calls claude -p with --output-format json
2. Claude Code returns token usage in its JSON output
3. aide tracks accumulated tokens across invocations
4. If accumulated >= limit or invocations > max_retries, the task stops

Saturating arithmetic

The budget tracker uses saturating arithmetic — token counts can never overflow u64::MAX. This is formally verified with kani.

Token shorthand

Default: "200k" if not specified.