Build Your Own LLM Cost Meter Before the Next Provider Change

Digital nomads building AI businesses need unified cost monitoring across multiple LLM providers. This episode walks through building a vendor-agnostic cost meter using a 19-field schema that captures tokens, costs, and audit trails. Santi and Kira cover three implementation paths: spreadsheet-first with Google Sheets and Apps Script, open-source with Langfuse and DuckDB, and lightweight SaaS with PostHog and Metronome. They detail spend caps, degraded-mode routing, and EU AI Act compliance requirements. Includes a starter template with CSV schema, webhook code, SQL queries, and Slack alert recipes for immediate deployment.