spend-gatelisted

Never run a billable action on a budget cap, an earlier "go ahead", or a guess. Every billable action gets its own gate, every time: estimate, balance, explicit yes, log. ## 1. Classify Decide whether the action about to run is billable before running it. Known billable surfaces: cloud GPU/CPU pod or instance creation (`runpodctl create`, `vultr-cli instance create`, `aws ec2 run-instances`, `gcloud compute instances create`, `az vm create`), paid deploys (`modal deploy`), MCP tools whose name matches a provider's `create-*` or `deploy-*` (e.g. `mcp__*runpod*__create-pod`), and any per-token/per-request paid API call (LLM APIs, paid SaaS APIs). If it's ambiguous, treat it as billable and ask rather than assume it's free. ## 2. Estimate (dry run) Before touching anything billable: unit price x hours (or tokens/requests) = total estimate. Cite the price source - a URL to the provider's current pricing page, or the tool's own quote/dry-run output plus the date you read it (prices drift; don't estimate from memory of a price you can't currently verify). Use the tool's dry-run or quote path if it has one instead of hand-computing from a remembered rate card. ## 3. Check live balance/credit Where the provider exposes a read-only balance/credit/billing call, call it before asking - never guess remaining budget from a cap mentioned earlier in the conversation. Only use read-only calls here (list-billing, get-account, and similar) - never a call that provisions, spends, or mutat