AI-DLC Session Cost

Purpose

Give the team a transparent, deterministic view of what the current workflow has consumed: how long it has run, how many stages have cleared their gates, how much the orchestrator wrote to its observation diaries, how often sensors fired, and how many learnings were captured.

Every number this skill prints comes from {{INVOKE}} engine runtime summary --json — the materialised, event-sourced view over runtime-graph.json. This skill does no counting of its own. It does not estimate tokens, does not walk the artefact tree, and does not read audit.md. If a number isn't in the tool's output, this skill does not invent it.

Classification

Read-only. This skill never advances the workflow stage pointer, never emits an audit event, and never writes a file. It is safe to run at any point in a workflow, including mid-stage.

Steps

Step 1: Read the aggregates

Run:

{{INVOKE}} engine runtime summary --json

If the command exits non-zero (no runtime-graph.json yet — the workflow hasn't compiled a graph), print:

No session data yet.

Session cost becomes available once a workflow has started and its
first stage transition has compiled runtime-graph.json. Run /aidlc to
begin, then re-run /aidlc-session-cost.

and STOP.

Otherwise parse the JSON. The shape is:

{
  "workflow_id": "...",          // ISO timestamp of the live workflow
  "scope": "...",
  "started_at": "...",
  "duration_minutes": 40,         // null when nothing has completed yet
  "stages":   { "total": N, "approved": N, "failed": N, "pending": N },
  "by_phase": { "<phase>": { "total": N, "approved": N, "failed": N, "pending": N }, ... },
  "memory":   { "total": N, "interpretations": N, "deviations": N, "tradeoffs": N, "open_questions": N },
  "sensors":  { "total": N, "passed": N, "failed": N, "budget_override": N, "incomplete": N },
  "learnings":{ "from_orchestrator": N, "from_user_addition": N }
}

Step 2: Render the report

Print the fields verbatim — do not recompute, round, or re-estimate any value. Use in progress when duration_minutes is null.

Session Cost
============

Workflow:   {workflow_id}
Scope:      {scope}
Duration:   {duration_minutes} min   (or "in progress")

Stages
  Total:      {stages.total}
  Approved:   {stages.approved}
  Failed:     {stages.failed}
  Pending:    {stages.pending}

By phase
  {phase}    {approved}/{total} approved[, {failed} failed][, {pending} pending]
  ...

Memory entries
  Total:            {memory.total}
  Interpretations:  {memory.interpretations}
  Deviations:       {memory.deviations}
  Trade-offs:       {memory.tradeoffs}
  Open questions:   {memory.open_questions}

Sensors
  Fired:            {sensors.total}
  Passed:           {sensors.passed}
  Failed:           {sensors.failed}
  Budget-override:  {sensors.budget_override}
  Incomplete:       {sensors.incomplete}

Learnings captured
  From orchestrator:    {learnings.from_orchestrator}
  From user additions:  {learnings.from_user_addition}

Step 3: Surface advisory notes (optional, narrative only)

You may add a short narrative note after the table — for example, flagging that many stages are still pending, or that sensors are firing incomplete often. Keep it to one or two sentences and base it only on the numbers above. Do not invent metrics the tool did not report.

Note on tokens: this skill deliberately does not print a token estimate. The retired file-size-to-token heuristic was guesswork dressed as data. If you need real token accounting, read it from your Claude Code session, not from a file-size approximation.

/aidlc-session-cost

SKILL.md