Metering is not “we’ll invoice usage monthly if we remember.” Metering is: this call has a price, unpaid calls don’t run, paid calls run once. Card economics made that embarrassing. Stable settlement makes it boring—which is the goal.
Pick what you’re actually selling
- Per call — enrich, lookup, classify
- Per job — a batch with a clear output
- Unlock — time-boxed access to a route (still a server, not a file)
If the unit is smaller than you can explain in a sentence, bundle it. Theater around dust wastes both of you.
Metering calculator (back of napkin)
- What does one successful call cost you (compute + your time amortized)?
- What would a human pay for the output without blinking?
- Floor: don’t go below a price you’ll hate to support.
- Publish that as the 402 price. Don’t A/B it in a prompt.
If unpaid traffic still hits the expensive path, you don’t have a meter. You have a log line.
Wire it
express-vybe-402 on the route. Session key cap so a loop can’t print money in the wrong direction. Same @you catalog as Collect if you also sell a session. Wallet of the buyer is the ledger. You don’t stand up a second “AI billing” database.
