Optimizing Credit Usage
Credit usage is one of the most common concerns for Gobii users. This guide covers practical strategies to get the most value from every credit — from choosing the right intelligence tier to designing efficient agent workflows.
Understanding How Credits Work
Every task your agent performs costs credits. The cost depends mainly on the agent's intelligence tier — higher tiers give your agent more reasoning power but cost more per task.
The key thing to remember: the highest intelligence tier can cost many times more per task than the lowest. That gap adds up fast when your agent runs dozens or hundreds of tasks per day.
The good news? Most tasks don't need the highest tier. Matching the tier to the job is the single biggest lever for keeping costs down.
Strategy 1: Choose the Right Intelligence Tier
Most agents don't need the highest intelligence tier for every task. Start low and only increase when you see the agent struggling.
When to Use a Lower Tier
Lower tiers handle straightforward, well-defined tasks reliably. Use them for:
- Scheduled monitoring — Checking prices, news headlines, or status pages
- Data collection — Scraping structured data, pulling API results
- Simple formatting — Converting data between formats, basic transformations
- Webhook handling — Processing incoming webhook payloads
When to Use a Higher Tier
Save the higher tiers for tasks that genuinely need deeper reasoning:
- Code review and debugging
- Complex analysis with many variables
- Large-context document processing
- Multi-agent coordination
- Research synthesis — Reading multiple sources and summarizing findings
- Email drafting — Composing context-aware responses
Tip: Start agents on a lower tier. Only bump it up if you see the agent making reasoning errors on its current tasks. You can always change it later.
Strategy 2: Set Effective Daily Budgets
Every agent has a configurable daily credit target. This acts as a soft limit — Gobii aims to stay within it — with a hard limit as a backstop that stops the agent for the day once reached.
Start Conservative
- Set a low initial budget
- Monitor actual usage on the Usage dashboard for a few days
- Increase only if the agent is consistently hitting its limit while producing valuable work
- If the agent rarely hits its limit, consider lowering it further
Rules of Thumb
- Simple monitors (low tier, once/hour): A small daily budget is usually plenty
- Research assistants (mid tier, scheduled briefings): A moderate budget allows a few research sessions per day
- Multi-agent coordinators (higher tiers): These tasks are deeper and cost more, so budget accordingly based on observed usage
You can adjust the daily target per agent, regardless of your plan's default.
Strategy 3: Design Credit-Efficient Workflows
Batch Work Instead of Spreading It
An agent that runs a single comprehensive task once uses fewer credits than an agent that runs many small tasks. For example:
- ❌ Inefficient: An agent that checks for news every 15 minutes (96 tasks/day)
- ✅ Efficient: An agent that runs once per day and processes all findings in one task
Be Specific in Instructions
Vague prompts cause agents to explore unnecessary paths, burning credits. Be precise:
| ❌ Vague | ✅ Specific |
|---|---|
| "Research competitors and send me findings" | "Check Crunchbase and Google News for funding announcements about [competitor list]. Send a one-paragraph summary of any new rounds." |
| "Monitor our social media" | "Check the Company page on LinkedIn for new posts once daily. If there's a new post, draft a Slack message quoting the first 200 characters." |
Use Webhooks Instead of Polling
When possible, use inbound webhooks to trigger agents reactively rather than having agents poll on a schedule:
- Polling: Agent checks an API every 15 minutes = 96 tasks/day whether data is new or not
- Webhooks: External service pushes data → agent processes it = 0 cost until something happens
Set Clear Stopping Conditions
Tell your agent when to stop to avoid unnecessary follow-up tasks:
- "Send your report and stop — don't ask for feedback or suggest follow-ups."
- "If no results are found, log it and stop."
- "Do not propose additional research unless specifically asked."
Strategy 4: Monitor and Audit Usage
The Usage dashboard shows credit consumption per agent. Check it regularly to spot problems:
Signs of Inefficient Usage
- High per-task cost variance — Same agent's cost per task swings widely → Check if the intelligence tier is stable
- Steady burn rate with no output — Agent using credits but not delivering → Review instructions for loops or vague prompts
- Unexpected spikes — Sudden jump in usage → Check for new schedules, peer-linked agents triggering each other, or changed instructions
Burn Rate Alerts
Gobii monitors burn rate across your agents. If consumption exceeds normal thresholds, you'll see warnings. Common causes:
- A newly created agent with no budget cap
- An agent stuck in a loop (e.g., Agent A passes work to Agent B, which passes work back to Agent A)
- A schedule set too frequently for the task
Summary: Optimization Cheat Sheet
| Action | Impact | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Lower intelligence tier | Significant savings per task | Low — one dropdown change |
| Reduce schedule frequency (e.g., every 15min → hourly) | Up to 75% fewer tasks/day | Low — one setting change |
| Set a daily budget cap | Prevents runaway costs | Low — one slider change |
| Tighten agent instructions | Fewer wasted exploratory tasks | Medium — prompt refinement |
| Replace polling with webhooks | Zero cost when idle | Medium — integration setup |
| Split broad agents into focused specialists | Fewer context-switching tasks | High — agent redesign |
Bottom line: Start simple, monitor usage, and iterate. Most users can cut their credit consumption significantly by combining a lower intelligence tier with tighter schedules and clearer instructions.