Cycles enforces budgets before agent calls

Hot take: this is the right layer to solve agent overspend, because it closes the race window before the expensive call ever happens.

• –The reserve-commit model is the differentiator; it’s more enforceable than dashboards, counters, or after-the-fact caps.
• –Broad provider support is a strong selling point: Ollama, llama.cpp, and cloud LLMs all fit the same control plane.
• –Self-hosting plus Redis/Docker makes it credible for teams that want control over spend and policy.
• –The demo story is concrete and easy to grasp, which should help adoption with agent builders.
• –Main adoption risk is estimation accuracy and how gracefully it handles retries, concurrent agents, and under/over-reservation edge cases.