Lesson 3: Where the money and the seconds go
33 min read·13 Oct 2026
Module 15 · Lesson 3 · About 50 minutes · Needs: Module 5, Lesson 1 (the loop and its cost ceiling), Module 7, Lesson 2 (prompt caching and ordering)
The situation
It is Wednesday 17 June 2026, week 10. Since Monday the agent has acted alone on cancellations and small refunds.
Marta has two questions before full launch: what will about 300 requests a day cost, and what stops one account from spending everyone's budget? Priya has a third: customers wait for the confirmation email, so where do the seconds go?
Module 5 gave every run a $0.05 ceiling. That stops one run, not a thousand. This lesson measures where Aisha's return, R-1001, spends its tokens and seconds, then cuts both.