Why I Built TokenBar: Most AI Bills Are a Visibility Problem, Not a Billing Problem

I kept seeing the same pattern in my own work. The bill was never the first problem. The first problem was that I did not know what I was spending while I was spending it. That sounds obvious until you live inside it. You open a model, test a few prompts, switch tools, paste more context, retry, compare outputs, and keep moving. The work feels small in the moment. Then the invoice lands and the number looks irrational. What surprised me was not that AI cost money. It was how little feedback exis