Guide · How-to

Budget setup

Daily and weekly spend caps, dual-layer enforcement, and what happens when you hit a cap.

Set the caps

# in your shell profile:
export SENKANI_BUDGET_DAILY=5.00
export SENKANI_BUDGET_WEEKLY=25.00

Or in ~/.senkani/config.json:

{{
  "budget": {{
    "daily_usd": 5.00,
    "weekly_usd": 25.00
  }}
}}

How enforcement fires

Before every tool call, the PreToolUse hook queries costForToday() and costForWeek() from the session DB. If either exceeds the cap, the hook denies the call with a structured message the agent sees.

Dual-layer

Enforcement runs at both the hook AND the MCP server — the agent can't bypass by switching to built-in tools. See three-layer stack.

Reset

Daily resets at midnight local. Weekly resets Monday 00:00 local. There's no manual reset — the cap is a ceiling on lifetime spend, not a bank.

Monitor

senkani stats

Shows lifetime totals plus current-day / current-week spend against each cap.

What happens when you hit a cap

The agent gets a denial message like:

Budget exceeded: daily cap $5.00 reached at $5.04.
Tool call denied. To continue today, raise SENKANI_BUDGET_DAILY or wait until midnight.

The agent typically stops cleanly and tells you. It's not a silent failure.

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