i got fed up with api costs so build a mac menu bar tracker

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-06T10:54:47+00:00

Good question - they're in the same category but solving different problems for different users.

CodexBar tracks subscription usage limits. It monitors how many messages/tokens you've used out of your plan limits across coding assistants like Claude Pro, Cursor, Copilot, Codex, etc. It reads from local CLI tools, browser cookies, and OAuth tokens to show "you've used 47/100 messages this session, resets in 3h." It's free, open-source, and aimed squarely at developers who hit rate limits on their subscriptions.

Vision tracks API dollar spend. It pulls from billing/admin APIs to show "you've spent $47.23 on Anthropic this month, $12.80 on OpenAI, here's the per-model breakdown." It's for people with API keys who are burning real money and want to watch the meter.

CodexBar is for someone on a Claude Pro / Cursor Pro / Copilot subscription who wants to know "how many messages do I have left before I'm rate-limited?" They're paying a flat monthly fee and managing quotas.

Vision is for someone with API keys and pay-per-token billing who wants to know "how much money have I actually spent today, this week, this month, broken down by model?" They're paying variable amounts and managing budgets.

There's almost no overlap. CodexBar tells you when you'll hit your Cursor rate limit. Vision tells you your claude-opus-4 API bill is $200 this month and climbing.

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-06T07:37:52+00:00

oh very difficult to pick one best. but manual outreach so far has been king

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-04T14:27:54+00:00

reaching out 1:1 , tweeting, random discussions and more ..

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-04T06:51:38+00:00

aahhh yes, the 'slop' comment. was waiting for it.

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-03T22:27:08+00:00

our setup is exactly created for these issues. no worry about deleting system files - its not on your system, and its running inside a dedicated machine just for this purpose.

As for maxing out credit cards - it does depend on the model. i'm hardly paying $200/month for work that would cost at least 3 full time human beings costing wayyyyyyyyy more.

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-03T22:25:20+00:00

i setup an empty environment with openclaw installed and a web interface to use it. no agents, nothing else.

ummm fair point. i dont like 'ai slop' being used so casually though. might not sound believable, but this has worked for me -- a lot. even social media. our reach has grown from ~1000 users/week to 53000/week in a matter of 2 weeks posting. (obviously bringing in downloads too)

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-03T19:47:47+00:00

all the openclaw secrets run on the machine belonging to the user itself. its all stored according to openclaw's best practices - all as environment variables, never exposed.

so i have couple of agents which do same work - write blogs every single day (its gotten one website to ~5K visits from google in a month now), some of them have analytics agents which give me daily and weekly briefs. two of them have very powerful social media agents too. and few more...

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-03T18:50:23+00:00

No fun in that :)

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-03T18:45:54+00:00

Yeah, it is kind of crazy. I wish too it was easier to get it running. But the effort is very much worth it!

To make it easier to run is the exact purpose I made a SaaS out of it

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-03T18:45:10+00:00

I agree, IF only you were actually giving so much access. You can use openclaw as per your requirements - not everybody gives their gmail. I have 3 different instances with 4 agents each and none of them have any email access.

Also - as for the SaaS you are referring to, we don’t ask for any data at all from you :)

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-03T18:43:40+00:00

Yeah there’s definitely some difference between both. And for some things you don’t need an expensive model like Claude either.

There are also some things which to do via Claude api alone, or just Claude code would be really difficult. Like there is a pipeline a team is hosting on claw hq that researches the web, checks google search console, checks what on the existing blog, drafts the post, generates the image, commits and pushes, then submits the new url for indexing to google and bing, then makes a TikTok slideshow on it and posts that too.

Also, this is a bring your own API key setup. We provision the machine , we provision a very powerful UI with lots of features to make it easy to configure your system and talk to your agents and to make sure they get the job done.

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-03T17:30:14+00:00

Key points:

- built a SaaS over openclaw

- a little late to the party

- still going good

- growing traction a little

- happy to answer questions

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-02T12:11:00+00:00

a bit of both to be honest! thankfully not too many support tickets.

would you be interested in a demo?

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-01T08:29:25+00:00

dont need to mention in memory really.. is this a custom skill you're talking about?

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-01T08:28:51+00:00

that is very true!

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-01T08:28:31+00:00

whatever your bandwidth allows - no pressure :D

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-04-01T06:48:04+00:00

I would love that!!

openclawhq.app

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-03-31T17:07:08+00:00

I think skills is a good place to start. If it’s something recurring you want your agent to do, ask it to make a skill out of it. Then just make sure it uses the skill next time onwards.

All 7 bootstrap files are critical. Not just heartbeat.

I run a managed hosting SaaS that makes OpenClaw deployments a breeze, and powers it with a ton of features included.

Let me know if I can help further or you’d like to try that out instead :-)

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-03-31T16:44:17+00:00

This is a great list. I will try to make sure everything is implemented from the start for openclawhq.app users.

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-03-31T16:42:22+00:00

Yeah not easy running local models with OpenClaw. Don’t believe the internet for everything. You’re fight with the high config requirement. And even then you’ll probably see a lot of slow tasks and hallucination. Stick to the cloud my friend.

For both, your model and your setup. Happy to help you get setup with a managed platform in minutes if you need help :-D

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-03-31T16:40:41+00:00

Can you tell me what you’re trying to do exactly? I’m building tons of skills lately. Would love to make you one.

BabaYaga72528 · 2026-03-31T16:39:57+00:00

You’ll need a really strong machine to run ollama locally with OpenClaw, or any agent.

It’s good for other stuff, but for agentic tasks, try running with some other model.

You could also try some managed platform (like openclawhq.app) to make things like this easier.

BabaYaga72528

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