What goes wrong
Autocomplete, background agents, and long-running sessions do not stop when you do. Overnight drip, repeating spike/quiet cycles, and “I left the editor open” patterns show up as mystery spend — often blamed on daytime chat that was never the culprit.
Why it matters
Idle burn empties plan allowances and extra-charge budgets without producing reviewable work. Catching it requires timing from the traffic itself — not an OS idle timer that thinks the machine is busy because a compile is running.
What good looks like
A view of how fast usage is flowing, idle-burn for the current month, and optional alerts when calls keep going after a quiet gap or during a long low-rate drip.
How Aura Wire helps
Aura Wire surfaces idle burn next to ordinary cost and live traffic views, using request timing — not prompt content.
- Usage-rate charts in live traffic and the session timeline
- Idle-burn on the cost overview (and optionally by process)
- Optional alerts — and, if you opt in, close an editor after sustained idle burn
Try Aura Wire
AI chat for VS Code with a local command center behind it. Free to try. Add the Windows desktop command center for extra screens and Host controls.
Windows installer — the .exe will not run on Mac, Linux, phones, or tablets. Open the download on a Windows PC.
Digitally signed by Halo Softworks
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