The bill that surprises everyone eventually You're building something with the OpenAI or Anthropic API. It's working well. Then you check your usage dashboard and the number is... not what you expected. This happens to almost everyone who builds with AI APIs for the first time. Not because the pricing is hidden - it's published clearly - but because tokens are not an intuitive unit of measurement, and the costs compound in ways that aren't obvious until you're already past the...