home / skills / jeremylongshore / claude-code-plugins-plus-skills / lindy-cost-tuning

This skill helps you reduce Lindy AI costs and optimize usage by analyzing usage, setting budgets, and routing to cheaper agents.

npx playbooks add skill jeremylongshore/claude-code-plugins-plus-skills --skill lindy-cost-tuning

Review the files below or copy the command above to add this skill to your agents.

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SKILL.md
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---
name: lindy-cost-tuning
description: |
  Optimize Lindy AI costs and manage usage efficiently.
  Use when reducing costs, analyzing usage patterns,
  or optimizing budget allocation.
  Trigger with phrases like "lindy cost", "lindy billing",
  "reduce lindy spend", "lindy budget".
allowed-tools: Read, Write, Edit
version: 1.0.0
license: MIT
author: Jeremy Longshore <[email protected]>
---

# Lindy Cost Tuning

## Overview
Optimize Lindy AI costs while maintaining service quality.

## Prerequisites
- Access to Lindy billing dashboard
- Usage data available
- Understanding of pricing tiers

## Instructions

### Step 1: Analyze Current Usage
```typescript
import { Lindy } from '@lindy-ai/sdk';

async function analyzeUsage() {
  const lindy = new Lindy({ apiKey: process.env.LINDY_API_KEY });

  const usage = await lindy.usage.monthly({
    startDate: '2025-01-01',
    endDate: '2025-01-31',
  });

  const analysis = {
    totalRuns: usage.agentRuns.total,
    totalCost: usage.billing.total,
    costPerRun: usage.billing.total / usage.agentRuns.total,
    topAgents: usage.byAgent
      .sort((a: any, b: any) => b.cost - a.cost)
      .slice(0, 5),
    peakHours: usage.byHour
      .sort((a: any, b: any) => b.runs - a.runs)
      .slice(0, 5),
  };

  console.log('Usage Analysis:', analysis);
  return analysis;
}
```

### Step 2: Implement Usage Budgets
```typescript
interface Budget {
  monthly: number;
  daily: number;
  perAgent: number;
}

const budget: Budget = {
  monthly: 500, // $500/month
  daily: 20,    // $20/day
  perAgent: 50, // $50/agent/month
};

async function checkBudget(): Promise<boolean> {
  const lindy = new Lindy({ apiKey: process.env.LINDY_API_KEY });

  const usage = await lindy.usage.current();

  if (usage.billing.monthly >= budget.monthly) {
    console.error('Monthly budget exceeded!');
    await sendAlert('Budget exceeded', { usage, budget });
    return false;
  }

  if (usage.billing.today >= budget.daily) {
    console.warn('Daily budget exceeded');
    return false;
  }

  return true;
}
```

### Step 3: Optimize Agent Costs
```typescript
// Cost-optimized agent configuration
const optimizedAgent = {
  name: 'Cost-Efficient Agent',
  instructions: 'Be brief. Answer in 1-2 sentences.',
  config: {
    model: 'gpt-3.5-turbo', // Cheaper model
    maxTokens: 100,         // Limit output
    temperature: 0.3,       // Less creative = fewer tokens
  },
};

// Route simple queries to cheaper agents
async function routeQuery(input: string) {
  const isSimple = input.length < 100 && !input.includes('analyze');

  const agentId = isSimple
    ? 'agt_cheap_simple'
    : 'agt_expensive_complex';

  return lindy.agents.run(agentId, { input });
}
```

### Step 4: Implement Caching to Reduce Calls
```typescript
import NodeCache from 'node-cache';

const cache = new NodeCache({ stdTTL: 3600 }); // 1 hour cache

async function cachedRun(agentId: string, input: string) {
  const cacheKey = `${agentId}:${input}`;

  // Check cache first (free!)
  const cached = cache.get(cacheKey);
  if (cached) {
    console.log('Cache hit - $0');
    return cached;
  }

  // Only call API if cache miss
  const result = await lindy.agents.run(agentId, { input });
  cache.set(cacheKey, result);

  console.log('Cache miss - API call made');
  return result;
}
```

### Step 5: Set Up Cost Alerts
```typescript
async function setupCostAlerts() {
  const lindy = new Lindy({ apiKey: process.env.LINDY_API_KEY });

  // Alert at 80% of budget
  await lindy.billing.alerts.create({
    threshold: 400, // $400 of $500 budget
    type: 'monthly',
    channels: ['email', 'slack'],
    message: 'Approaching monthly budget limit',
  });

  // Daily anomaly detection
  await lindy.billing.alerts.create({
    threshold: 50, // 50% above average
    type: 'anomaly',
    channels: ['slack'],
    message: 'Unusual spending detected',
  });
}
```

## Cost Optimization Checklist
```markdown
[ ] Usage analysis completed
[ ] Budget limits defined
[ ] Cost alerts configured
[ ] Caching implemented
[ ] Cheaper models for simple tasks
[ ] Max tokens configured
[ ] Unused agents identified and disabled
[ ] Peak usage patterns analyzed
```

## Output
- Usage analysis report
- Budget enforcement
- Cost-optimized agents
- Caching for reduced API calls
- Alert system

## Error Handling
| Issue | Cause | Solution |
|-------|-------|----------|
| Budget exceeded | High usage | Throttle or pause |
| Cost spike | Anomaly | Investigate and alert |
| Cache ineffective | Low hit rate | Tune TTL |

## Examples

### Monthly Cost Report
```typescript
async function generateCostReport() {
  const usage = await analyzeUsage();

  const report = `
# Lindy Cost Report - ${new Date().toISOString().slice(0, 7)}

## Summary
- Total Runs: ${usage.totalRuns}
- Total Cost: $${usage.totalCost.toFixed(2)}
- Cost per Run: $${usage.costPerRun.toFixed(4)}

## Top Agents by Cost
${usage.topAgents.map((a: any) => `- ${a.name}: $${a.cost.toFixed(2)}`).join('\n')}

## Recommendations
${usage.costPerRun > 0.05 ? '- Consider cheaper models for simple tasks' : ''}
${usage.cacheHitRate < 0.3 ? '- Improve caching strategy' : ''}
  `;

  return report;
}
```

## Resources
- [Lindy Pricing](https://lindy.ai/pricing)
- [Usage Dashboard](https://app.lindy.ai/usage)
- [Cost Optimization Guide](https://docs.lindy.ai/cost)

## Next Steps
Proceed to `lindy-reference-architecture` for architecture patterns.

Overview

This skill helps optimize Lindy AI costs and manage usage efficiently while preserving service quality. It provides actionable analysis, budgeting, routing, caching, and alerting patterns to reduce spend. Use it to produce reports, enforce budgets, and tune agent configurations for cost-effectiveness.

How this skill works

The skill inspects Lindy billing and usage data to produce a cost and usage analysis, identify expensive agents and peak hours, and compute cost-per-run metrics. It implements budget checks, routes simple queries to cheaper agents, caches responses to avoid repeat API calls, and configures alerts for threshold and anomaly detection. Outputs include reports, enforced budgets, optimized agent configs, and alerts.

When to use it

  • You need to reduce monthly Lindy spend without degrading core functionality.
  • You want to identify high-cost agents, peak usage hours, or unusual billing spikes.
  • You need automated budget enforcement and early warning alerts.
  • You plan to route simple queries to cheaper models or limit token usage.
  • You want to add caching to lower API call volume and cost.

Best practices

  • Run a baseline usage analysis to get total runs, total cost, cost per run, top agents, and peak hours.
  • Define clear monthly, daily, and per-agent budgets and enforce them with automated checks and alerts.
  • Use cheaper models and constrain max tokens for simple tasks; route complex queries to higher-tier agents.
  • Implement caching for identical queries with a sensible TTL and monitor cache hit rate to tune effectiveness.
  • Set alerts at an early threshold (e.g., 80% of budget) and add anomaly detection for sudden spikes.
  • Disable or throttle unused or underperforming agents and review configurations periodically.

Example use cases

  • Generate a monthly cost report showing top-cost agents and concrete recommendations.
  • Automatically block or throttle agent execution when daily or monthly budget limits are reached.
  • Route customer support FAQs to a low-cost agent and route analytics requests to a higher-capability agent.
  • Cache repeated knowledge-base lookups for an hour to reduce calls during high-traffic windows.
  • Detect a sudden cost spike and notify Slack/email channels for immediate investigation.

FAQ

How quickly can I see savings?

You can usually see immediate reductions by routing simple queries to cheaper models and adding caching; larger savings accrue after tuning budgets and disabling unused agents.

What metrics should I track first?

Start with total cost, cost per run, top-cost agents, peak hours, and cache hit rate to prioritize optimizations.