SIMULATION — fictional utility. Riverbend Water Authority does not exist.
Clearwell

SIMULATION project · build economics

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Build economics

What Clearwell cost to build and what the demo costs to run. As of Nov 1, 2026; every estimate is marked as one.

Headline

Development cost (API pricing) Estimate$621.25Build to date: Claude Code tokens, Oct 21–1, at standard API list prices
Monthly run cost$34.79 / month5 of 8 recurring items priced, 3 to confirm; 1 is a shared bill counted whole. Plus the app's Claude calls, capped at $5.00 a day

Development (Claude Code)

Estimate: the tokens Claude Code used, priced at standard API list prices.

Estimated cost by day

$621.25 over 12 days
Full day Partial day
  1. 21
  2. 22
  3. 23
  4. 24
  5. 25
  6. 26
  7. 27
  8. 28
  9. $20229
  10. 30
  11. 31
  12. $91
Show as table
DayEstimated cost
Oct 21$1.65
Oct 22$1.42
Oct 23$0.00
Oct 24$0.00
Oct 25$0.00
Oct 26$41.63
Oct 27$105.05
Oct 28$115.58
Oct 29$202.10
Oct 30$65.01
Oct 31$80.27
Nov 1 (partial)$8.54

Who spent it

By model

Output
6.7M
Cache writes
40.8M
Cache reads
1,914.8M

Tokens. All in one Claude Code session; builder subagents included.

The build actually ran on a Claude subscription; these figures are what the same tokens would cost at standard API rates.

Running the demo

$34.79 a month priced, 3 to confirm. Yearly bills count as a twelfth; one-time and capped items stay out of the monthly sum.

  • Fly.io machine: shared-cpu-2x, 2 GB RAM, iad, always onPublished price for a started shared-cpu-2x / 2 GB machine in Ashburn (iad), running all month.
    List price$13.39 / month
  • Fly.io volume: 1 GB, encrypted$0.15 per GB of provisioned capacity per month. Snapshots $0.08/GB/month after the first 10 GB free.
    List price$0.15 / month
  • Vercel Pro plan for the web appShared billShared across multiple projects; not all attributable to Clearwell.
    Measured$20.00 / month
  • Domain clearwell.techApproximate, from Lead's records.
    Measured$15.00 / year$1.25 / month
  • X API prepaid creditsPaid once; posts draw it down.
    Measured$10.00 once
  • X API free credits (not cash)$5.00 of free credits on top of the prepaid balance; they expire 2027-01-26.
    Measured$0.00 once
  • X API usage per postPer-post price to confirm; the demo posts only approved notices.
    to confirm
  • Anthropic API for the app's own Claude calls: daily capA ceiling, not spend: past it the incident falls back to rules only.
    Measured$5.00 / day cap
  • Anthropic API for the app: actual spendThe current run's figure is read live below.
    to confirm
  • ntfy push alertsFree tier.
    Measured$0.00 / month
  • Google Maps Map Tiles APIUsage-priced; amount to confirm.
    to confirm

Live this run

Connecting to the backend

AI cost this run—

Rules and statistics first; Claude only when needed.

  1. —readings checked by rules and statistics
  2. —detections raised
  3. —sent to Claude

Assumptions and sources

  • Development figures are an estimate: tokens read from the Claude Code transcripts, multiplied by OpenRouter list prices fetched 2026-11-01. They are not what was paid.
  • Only sessions that worked in the Clearwell folder (its worktrees included) are counted. A session counts whole, builder subagents included.
  • The last day (Nov 1) is a partial day.
  • The monthly run cost adds the running items billed monthly, plus yearly bills divided by 12. Null amounts are “to confirm” and are left out of the sum, never counted as $0.
  • Vercel Pro is shared across several projects and is counted whole, so the monthly figure overstates Clearwell's share.
  • The build actually ran on a Claude subscription; these figures are what the same tokens would cost at standard API rates.
  • Two price lists are in play. The app's own Claude costs (the live cost counter and the per-call figures) use Anthropic's first-party list prices; the development estimate above uses OpenRouter's list prices for the same models, so the two are not on one price list.
  • The app's Claude spend stops at the daily cap; past it, incidents fall back to rules only.
  • Fly.io prices are the published list prices for Ashburn (iad).
ItemBasisSourceAs of
Development tokens by day, model and sessionEstimateClaude Code transcripts (agent-cost-report collector) × OpenRouter list prices fetched 2026-11-012026-11-01
Claude Code tokens, Oct 21–Nov 1 (estimate at API list price)EstimateClaude Code transcripts × OpenRouter list prices (openrouter.ai/api/v1/models), fetched 2026-11-012026-11-01
Fly.io machine: shared-cpu-2x, 2 GB RAM, iad, always onList pricehttps://docs.fly.io/about/pricing (fetched 2026-10-28)2026-10-28
Fly.io volume: 1 GB, encryptedList pricehttps://docs.fly.io/about/pricing (fetched 2026-10-28)2026-10-28
Vercel Pro plan for the web appMeasuredVercel account plan2026-10-28
Domain clearwell.techMeasuredLead's records (registrar)2026-10-28
X API prepaid creditsMeasuredX developer console, billing2026-10-28
X API free credits (not cash)MeasuredX developer console, billing2026-10-28
X API usage per postTo confirmX developer pricing2026-10-28
Anthropic API for the app's own Claude calls: daily capMeasuredCW_CLAUDE_DAILY_USD (backend setting, default $5)2026-10-28
Anthropic API for the app: actual spendTo confirmAnthropic Console usage2026-10-28
ntfy push alertsMeasuredntfy.sh free tier2026-10-28
Google Maps Map Tiles APITo confirmGoogle Cloud billing2026-10-28