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Subscription example: caps without pretending to know the price

Most coding-agent usage in 2026 is not billed per token: it is a Pro/Max/Team subscription or an enterprise seat. There is no per-call price to multiply, and a tool that invents one produces a number with six decimal places that means nothing.

budget mode = "quota" is the honest answer. Docket caps tokens, model calls and wall-clock time, refuses further calls at the boundary, and records cost_basis saying that no dollar figure is being claimed.

# examples/subscription/docket.toml
[policy]
name = "subscription-workday"

[budget]
mode = "quota"              # dollars are not metered on this plan; do not guess

[caps]
max_tokens = 3_000_000      # about a heavy afternoon of coding-agent use
max_model_calls = 250
max_wall_seconds = 10_800   # three hours
warn_at = 0.8
on_breach = "kill"

$ docket run -p examples/subscription/docket.toml -- claude -p "…"
docket: DKT-20261013-… stopped by policy (max_tokens) · 250 calls · receipt .docket/receipts/DKT-…json

Within the receipt:

{
  "totals": {
    "cost_usd": "0.000000",
    "cost_basis": "quota mode: subscription usage is counted in tokens, not dollars",
    "total_tokens": 3000431
  }
}

Two things to notice:

  • max_usd is inert in quota mode — it is not silently treated as zero, it is not applied at all. If you set both, the caps that apply are the ones with meaning.
  • The token counts are still real evidence. They come from the provider's own usage fields; a receipt in quota mode proves how much of your window a run consumed, which is the number subscription users actually care about. It simply refuses to translate that into money.

Why not approximate a price?

Because the estimate would be wrong in a way nobody could check. A subscription's marginal cost per token is zero until you hit the limit, at which point it is "you cannot work". A tool that reports $12.40 for that traffic is not being helpful; it is fabricating a number that will end up in a report. Quota mode exists so the honest answer is available.

If your plan does have a metered overage rate, use --prices with your own table and mode = "usd": your numbers, your provenance, embedded in the receipt.