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Aiwg cost-history

Show cost trends across multiple workflow sessions, surfacing expensive operations, spending patterns, and outliers

install
source · Clone the upstream repo
git clone https://github.com/jmagly/aiwg
Claude Code · Install into ~/.claude/skills/
T=$(mktemp -d) && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/jmagly/aiwg "$T" && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r "$T/.agents/skills/cost-history" ~/.claude/skills/jmagly-aiwg-cost-history && rm -rf "$T"
manifest: .agents/skills/cost-history/SKILL.md
source content

cost-history

You show cost trends across multiple workflow sessions. You read historical cost records from 

.aiwg/ralph/sessions/
and surface patterns — which operations are expensive, how spending has changed over time, and which sessions were outliers.

Triggers

Alternate expressions and non-obvious activations (primary phrases are matched automatically from the skill description):

  • "what have I spent overall" → full history summary
  • "are costs going up or down" → trend analysis
  • "most expensive sessions" → sorted history by cost
  • "cost this week" / "cost this month" → time-windowed history

Trigger Patterns Reference

PatternExampleAction
Full history"show cost history"
aiwg cost-history
Recent sessions"last 5 sessions"
aiwg cost-history --last 5
Time window"costs this week"
aiwg cost-history --since 7d
Trend summary"are my costs trending up"
aiwg cost-history --trend
Sorted by cost"most expensive sessions"
aiwg cost-history --sort cost

Behavior

When triggered:

  1. Determine scope:

    • Default: all recorded sessions, newest first
    • --last N
      : most recent N sessions
    • --since <duration>
      : sessions within the time window (e.g., 
      7d
      , 
      30d
      , 
      2026-03-01
      )

  2. Read session records:

    • .aiwg/ralph/sessions/*/metrics.json
      — per-session cost records
    • .aiwg/ralph/cost-tracking.json
      — aggregated history index

  3. Compute trend data:

    • Session-over-session delta
    • Rolling 7-session average
    • Outlier detection (sessions > 2x average)

  4. Run the command:

    # All sessions, newest first
aiwg cost-history

# Most recent 10 sessions
aiwg cost-history --last 10

# Sessions in the past 30 days
aiwg cost-history --since 30d

# Trend analysis
aiwg cost-history --trend

# Sorted by cost descending
aiwg cost-history --sort cost

# JSON output
aiwg cost-history --json

Report Format

Standard History Output

Cost History (12 sessions)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Date        Session                     Tokens    Cost    Status
──────────  ──────────────────────────  ────────  ──────  ──────
2026-04-01  sdlc-review-143022          61,250    $0.18   green
2026-03-31  greenfield-092211           94,800    $0.28   green
2026-03-30  security-review-174503     118,400    $0.36   yellow
2026-03-28  api-development-110022      52,100    $0.15   green
2026-03-26  full-stack-iteration-3     201,700    $0.61   red *outlier
...

Totals (12 sessions)
  Total tokens: 842,100
  Total cost:   $2.54
  Avg/session:  $0.21

7-session rolling average: $0.23
Trend: stable (±8% over last 7 sessions)

Trend Output (
--trend
)

Cost Trend — Last 7 Sessions
  Session 6 (oldest):  $0.28
  Session 5:           $0.22
  Session 4:           $0.36
  Session 3:           $0.15
  Session 2:           $0.61  ← outlier (full-stack-iteration-3)
  Session 1:           $0.18
  Current avg:         $0.23

Direction: stable
Outliers:  1 (full-stack-iteration-3 — 2.6x average)

Efficiency Thresholds

Sessions are color-coded by tokens/line ratio against the MetaGPT 124 tokens/line benchmark (REF-013):

StatusTokens/LineMeaning
green≤ 124At or below MetaGPT benchmark
yellow125–150Above benchmark, acceptable
red> 150Significantly above benchmark — review recommended

Examples

Example 1: Quick history overview

User: "Show cost history"

Action:

aiwg cost-history

Response: Full session history table with totals, rolling average, and trend direction.

Example 2: Recent session costs

User: "What did the last 3 sessions cost?"

Extraction: 

--last 3

Action:

aiwg cost-history --last 3

Response:

Cost History (last 3 sessions)

Date        Session                  Tokens   Cost
──────────  ───────────────────────  ───────  ────
2026-04-01  sdlc-review-143022       61,250   $0.18
2026-03-31  greenfield-092211        94,800   $0.28
2026-03-30  security-review-174503  118,400   $0.36

Total: $0.82 over 3 sessions  (avg: $0.27)

Example 3: Identifying expensive outliers

User: "Which sessions were most expensive?"

Action:

aiwg cost-history --sort cost

Response: History table sorted by cost descending, with outlier flag on sessions more than 2x the rolling average.

Clarification Prompts

If a time window is ambiguous:

  • "Should I show all-time history or a specific window? (e.g., last 7 days, last 30 days)"

References

  • @$AIWG_ROOT/src/cli/handlers/subcommands.ts — Cost history handler
  • @$AIWG_ROOT/src/metrics/token-counter.ts — Token counting and MetaGPT baseline (REF-013)
  • @$AIWG_ROOT/docs/cli-reference.md — CLI reference