Spend controls

connect0 gives you two independent guardrails against surprise spend: a spend cap you set explicitly, and the prepaid wallet itself, which fails closed at zero. This page covers both — how to configure the cap, and what actually happens when credits run out.

Set a spend cap

Open /a/<slug>/billing/caps. Only account owners and admins can change these. There are two optional thresholds for the current calendar month:

• Notify at — when month-to-date spend crosses this amount, you get a one-shot email alert. It doesn't block anything; it's an early warning.
• Hard cap — when spend crosses this amount, further metered calls are blocked with spend_cap_exceeded until the next UTC month rollover.

Set either, both, or neither. Leave a field blank to disable that threshold. The cap counts only settled usage — pending, unsettled purchases never affect it.

A cap and the wallet answer different questions: the cap says "stop before I've spent more than $X this month," while the wallet says "there is nothing left to spend." Use the cap to bound a busy month even when your balance is healthy.

Running out of credits

When your wallet hits zero, credit-burning actions fail closed:

• New agent runs, sandbox invocations, connector materialise calls, and paid tool calls (like web_fetch) are rejected with insufficient_credits.
• Reads, dashboards, and data export keep working — running out never locks you out of your own data.

Burn is computed hourly, so an account can dip slightly negative on in-flight work before enforcement catches up; that's a small courtesy overdraft, not a credit line. Top up at /a/<slug>/billing/credits and the blocked action succeeds on the next attempt.

Watch spend before it stops you

The cap is a backstop, not your only visibility. Check month-to-date spend and burn rate any time at /a/<slug>/usage — see Usage and metering. Pairing a notify-at threshold with a quick weekly glance at the usage view is usually enough to keep bills predictable.

Where to go next

• Managing billing — top up so a hard cap or empty wallet doesn't stall your agents.
• Common issues — quick fixes when something stops working, including out-of-credits symptoms.