Laravel AI Guard: Control and Optimize AI Costs in Laravel AI SDK Applications

AI is powerful — and expensive. Whether you’re building chatbots, agents, or intelligent workflows with the Laravel AI SDK, every token counts. A single misconfigured prompt or runaway loop can rack up hundreds of dollars in OpenAI or Anthropic usage fees before you even notice.

That’s where Laravel AI Guard comes in.

Created by subhashladumor1, Laravel AI Guard is a lightweight package that helps you:

Track token usage across your Laravel AI SDK agents
Monitor and enforce budget limits
Prevent runaway costs and unexpected billing spikes
Optimize prompt design and model selection

It’s the missing piece for any Laravel app using OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, or other LLMs — especially in production.

🛡️ What Is Laravel AI Guard?

Laravel AI Guard is a cost-control and monitoring layer for apps built with the Laravel AI SDK (12.x). It integrates directly with your AI agents and tracks:

Token usage per request
Cost estimates based on model pricing
Budget thresholds and enforcement rules

It’s designed to be plug-and-play, with minimal configuration and full compatibility with Laravel’s expressive AI syntax.

🔑 Key Features

Feature	Description
Token Usage Tracking	Monitors prompt + completion tokens per request
Cost Estimation	Calculates cost based on model pricing (e.g., OpenAI GPT-4, Claude 3)
Budget Enforcement	Blocks or warns when usage exceeds defined thresholds
Per-Agent Limits	Set different budgets for different agents or tools
Session-Level Monitoring	Track usage per user, session, or job
Middleware Integration	Drop-in middleware to guard routes or agents
Logging + Alerts	Log usage spikes, send alerts, or trigger fallback flows

🧱 Installation

composer require subhashladumor1/laravel-ai-guard

Then publish the config:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=ai-guard-config

⚙️ Configuration

In config/ai-guard.php, you can define:

return [
    'default_budget' => 10.00, // USD
    'providers' => [
        'openai' => [
            'gpt-4' => [
                'prompt_cost_per_1k_tokens' => 0.03,
                'completion_cost_per_1k_tokens' => 0.06,
            ],
            'gpt-3.5-turbo' => [
                'prompt_cost_per_1k_tokens' => 0.0015,
                'completion_cost_per_1k_tokens' => 0.002,
            ],
        ],
    ],
];

You can also set per-agent budgets:

'budgets' => [
    'invoiceAgent' => 5.00,
    'supportBot' => 20.00,
],

🧪 Example: Tracking Token Usage

Let’s say you have a Laravel AI agent:

$reply = AI::agent('supportBot')->ask('How do I reset my password?');

Laravel AI Guard will:

Count prompt + completion tokens
Estimate cost based on model
Log usage and check against budget

If the budget is exceeded, it can:

Throw an exception
Return a fallback response
Log and continue (configurable)

🔄 Middleware Protection

You can protect routes or agents with middleware:

Route::post('/chat', function () {
    return AI::agent('supportBot')->ask(request('message'));
})->middleware('ai.guard');

This ensures that every AI call is monitored and budget-checked before execution.

📊 Usage Dashboard

Laravel AI Guard can log usage to the database. You can build a simple dashboard to show:

Token usage per agent
Cost breakdown by model
Daily/weekly/monthly spend
Top users or sessions by usage

Perfect for SaaS platforms or internal tools.

🧩 Advanced Use Cases

1. Per-User Budgeting

Assign budgets per user:

'budgets' => [
    'user:123' => 10.00,
    'user:456' => 25.00,
],

Track usage by session or user ID and enforce limits.

2. Prompt Optimization

Use logs to identify:

High-cost prompts
Inefficient completions
Opportunities to shorten or rephrase prompts

This helps reduce costs without sacrificing quality.

3. Model Switching

If a request exceeds budget, fallback to a cheaper model:

try {
    $reply = AI::agent('supportBot')->ask($message);
} catch (BudgetExceededException $e) {
    $reply = AI::provider('openai:gpt-3.5-turbo')->ask($message);
}

🧠 Why This Matters

LLMs are powerful — but they’re not free. Laravel AI Guard helps you:

Stay within budget
Avoid billing surprises
Optimize usage
Build responsible AI apps

Whether you’re building a chatbot, agent, or AI-powered workflow, Laravel AI Guard gives you the visibility and control you need.

🔮 The Future of AI Cost Control

Laravel AI Guard is just the beginning. Future possibilities include:

Real-time dashboards
Usage-based billing for SaaS
Alerts via Slack or email
Integration with Laravel Horizon for queued jobs
Token prediction before execution

Final Thoughts

AI is no longer optional — it’s foundational. But with great power comes great billing risk. Laravel AI Guard helps you tame that risk with:

Token tracking
Budget enforcement
Cost optimization

It’s the perfect companion for Laravel AI SDK apps — especially in production.