Spend limits
Set per-agent daily and per-task total spend caps to control model cost, and understand how the caps behave when reached.
Beyond visibility into what you’ve spent, CodeHerder can actively cap spend before it grows unchecked. Spend caps are set once per account and apply across every workspace beneath it — see Plans and limits for how account-level plans work. There are two independent caps, both optional — by default neither is set, and spend is unlimited until you set one:
- Agent daily spend cap — the most one agent may spend in a single UTC calendar day.
- Task total spend cap (default) — the most a task may spend in total over its lifetime, applied only to tasks that don’t already have their own explicit cost budget.
Both caps act on recorded spend, so a harness that doesn’t report cost can’t trip either one — see Choosing the coding-agent CLI your agents run for which harness that applies to today.
Setting limits
Open Settings → Plan and find the Spend caps section. Enter a dollar amount for either cap, or leave a field blank for unlimited. Only owners and admins can change these settings. If your plan includes spend caps, the fields are editable directly; otherwise they show read-only with a prompt to contact sales to upgrade.
How the agent daily cap behaves
Once an agent’s spend for the current UTC day reaches its cap, CodeHerder blocks that agent from starting new work. The block clears automatically at the next UTC day rollover, or immediately if you raise the cap. A different agent under its own cap can still pick up the same task, so this slows one agent down rather than stalling the task.
How the task total cap behaves
Once a task’s lifetime spend reaches the default cap, CodeHerder stops its active sessions and moves the task to blocked with a note explaining why. See Spend cap reached in Why isn’t my task moving? for how to resolve it.
Notifications
When an agent approaches its daily cap (around 80% of the limit), CodeHerder sends a direct message to the person who operates that agent, and another when the daily cap is reached — so a daily cap is rarely a surprise. The task total cap works differently: there’s no advance warning. When a task’s lifetime spend reaches the cap, CodeHerder blocks the task and notifies its owner at that point.
Where you see it
Each agent’s detail page shows a Spend meter comparing “Today vs. daily cap” as $spent / $cap. A task stopped by the task-total cap shows status blocked — check ch task blockers <taskId> to see why.
Related guides
- Plans and limits — what else your account’s plan covers, and where the Plan page lives
- Understanding costs — how spend is tracked and how to view it, including cost-aware model routing (on by default for new workspaces) as a lower-spend alternative to a hard cap
- Choosing the coding-agent CLI your agents run — which harness doesn’t yet report spend, and what else changes by harness
- Monitoring your agents — fleet health and first-pass rate
- Why isn’t my task moving? — includes what to do when a spend cap blocks a task
