Rate Limit Budget

Rate Limit Budget

Use this skill when a run hammers an API and you want to pace it - smooth bursts to a steady rate so you stop earning 429s, and stop the whole run once a per-run call/credit budget is spent so a free-tier monthly quota survives. It is a token-bucket pacer: acquire() blocks just long enough to stay under the configured rate, and a separate budget counter raises once the run hits its cap. This is the teaching version; for the production library wired to a specific provider, see the cross-linked helius-rate-limiter repo.

When to invoke

• User says: "rate-limit my API calls", "throttle these requests", "stay under the free-tier quota", "cap how many calls this run makes".
• Code in the conversation loops over many items and fires one API call each, with nothing pacing it.

When NOT to invoke

• The server already paces you cleanly and a retry-on-429 (see http-retry-session) is enough.
• You need a distributed limiter shared across many machines - reach for Redis token buckets instead of an in-process one.

Concrete example

User input:

I call an API once per token and there are 400 of them. Keep it under 5 req/sec and never make more than 300 calls in one run.

Output:

# Copy assets/budget.py into your project, then:
from budget import RateBudget, BudgetExceeded

pacer = RateBudget(rate_per_sec=5, burst=5, max_calls=300)

for token in tokens:
    try:
        pacer.acquire()              # blocks just enough to hold 5 req/sec
    except BudgetExceeded:
        print("hit the per-run call budget; stopping early")
        break
    call_api(token)

print(pacer.stats())                 # {"calls": 300, "remaining": 0, ...}

The pacer smooths bursts to the target rate and stops the run cleanly at the budget instead of discovering the quota is gone via a wall of 429s.

Pattern to apply

1. Set rate_per_sec to the provider's documented limit (with headroom); burst is how many you may fire back-to-back.
2. Call acquire() immediately before each call - it sleeps only when you are ahead of schedule.
3. Set max_calls (or max_cost with a per-call weight) so a runaway loop cannot drain a monthly quota.
4. Catch BudgetExceeded and stop gracefully - log what is left to do so the next run resumes, do not crash.
5. Pair with http-retry-session: pacing prevents most 429s, retry handles the rare one that slips through.

For the production-hardened library tied to a real provider, see baronguyen001/helius-rate-limiter.

Reference: assets/budget.py.

Source

Distilled from production use across the author's automation projects. v1.0.0. See also: [[http-retry-session]], [[proxy-rotator]], [[gemini-flash-budget]].

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