A few months ago I got hit with a surprise AI bill.
Not a huge enterprise invoice. Just enough to make me stop and think, "I have no idea what I am actually spending here."
That is a bad feeling when you are solo and shipping fast.
I kept opening tabs, checking dashboards, and trying to guess which model calls were expensive. The context switching was the real tax.
So I built TokenBar, a tiny macOS menu bar app that shows token usage in real time.
The idea is simple: make the cost visible while I work, not after the bill lands.
It turned into one of those products that solves a very specific annoyance by staying out of the way.
If you build with AI every day, visibility matters more than people think.
Less guessing. Less tab hopping. Less surprise.
More shipping.
TokenBar is here: https://tokenbar.site
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