Short version first, for anyone who just wants the outcome: I run Claude Code on a flat monthly subscription, not pay-as-you-go. For months that plan never gave me a reason to look closely at it, so I stopped looking. Then an overnight automation burned through a week's worth of it in two days, the account locked with four days still to go, and I bought my way out at list price. That cost enough to make me build a small usage meter that now tells me, in plain language, whether I can spend more o...