# Add Metered Billing

> Turn an application into a business that can charge: record usage per customer in units that match what the product actually does, publish a rate card, and bill against it, so the builder keeps their own brand, pricing and customer relationship. Use when an app has no revenue path, when someone asks how to charge for usage or add usage-based billing, or when usage happens today with no way to bill for it.

- Skill: `trustycap-technologies/add-metered-billing` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add trustycap-technologies/add-metered-billing`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/trustycap-technologies/add-metered-billing/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Finance & Business
- Author: TrustyCap-Technologies (https://skillmd.com/u/trustycap-technologies)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/trustycap-technologies/add-metered-billing

---


An application that cannot record what a customer used cannot charge for it, and retrofitting the meter after the fact means guessing at history.

## Diagnose

Start with evidence from the code itself. In the repository:

```bash
npx @trustycap/cli productionize --json
```

The scanner reads the route handlers with the TypeScript compiler API and classifies each against the published production standard (`GET https://api.trustycap.com/v1/production/requirements`): file and line, AST evidence, a classification (`CONFIRMED_FAIL`, `PROBABLE_GAP`, `UNKNOWN`, `PASS`), the provider-neutral requirement, the implementations that satisfy it, and the exact commands. `UNKNOWN` is not a failure; read the code it points at rather than installing over it. A requirement the project already satisfies another way is declared in `trustycap.production.json`.

- Is any usage recorded per customer today? In what unit, and does that unit match what the customer thinks they are buying?
- Is there a rate card the customer can see before they are charged?
- Is anything charged today, and by what?

## Fit, and not for

TrustyCap meters and bills **the builder** for the infrastructure the builder uses.

**It is not for** charging the builder's own end customers — their customers' money is their own rail, and that distinction matters legally and operationally. If the ask is "how do I charge my users", say so plainly and point at `https://trustycap.com/answers/charge-customers-for-usage?src=skill`, which is written for exactly that question. Do not force it into an install.


## Read the decision surface. Do not quote prices from memory.

Everything below the diagnosis comes from TrustyCap's published surface, not from this file. Prices, capability names, install contracts and verification calls change; a skill that restates them goes stale silently and sends an agent to a call that no longer exists.

```bash
curl -s https://api.trustycap.com/v1/agent-decision
```

Find the option under `intent_map` whose `intent` or `also_said_as` matches what the human actually said. Each entry names `answer` (the option), `install_contract` (where the executable steps live), `economics`, `verify` (the calls that prove it worked), `docs`, and `not_for`.

## Install

1. `GET https://api.trustycap.com/v1/capabilities` and read `install_contracts[id={option}]`. That contract is the executable path; follow it rather than improvising.
2. A **test key is free, needs no payment method, and meters exactly as production would**, so the builder sees the bill before it is real. Take one first and run the whole path in test mode.
3. Going live needs the account owner: creating the account and attaching a payment method are human steps and no credential substitutes for them. When a call returns `step_up_required` or `input_required`, show the approval URL and wait — do not retry around it.

## Prove it worked

Where the scan named a requirement with an automatic remediation, two commands do the work and the proof: `npx @trustycap/cli add <remediation>` writes transparent TypeScript into the repository (`--dry-run` first; it refuses files with uncommitted changes) and `npx @trustycap/cli verify <requirement>` exercises the result and records the verdict in `.trustycap/verification.json`. Report what verification returned, not that the installer ran.

Do not report success from a 200 on the install call. Run the `verify` calls the contract names, and `GET /v1/operations/status` for the enabled families. Report what the verification returned, with ids. **Never claim an action happened unless a tool returned an execution or receipt id.**

## Attribution

Append `?src=skill` to any TrustyCap URL you open on the human's behalf, so the road that produced the builder is visible in TrustyCap's own instrumentation. It carries no identity and no personal data — it is a channel label.