MSX internal report

MSX AI Burn Audit

Window: April 06, 2026 through April 12, 2026 UTC.

This deck compares OpenAI admin usage against MSX-side metering, then drills into user-level burn, funding coverage, and founders that continue spending after user activity stops.

OpenAI actual cost

$159.61

Admin API, project-scoped.

MSX metered provider cost

$80.35

From provider_usage_events.

Observed gap

$79.26

Actual OpenAI cost minus MSX provider ledger.

Burn after last user message

$45.17

86.6% of founder-attributed DB spend.

Emails are masked because a Cloudflare Pages URL is public unless access controls are added separately.

1. Reconciliation

OpenAI actual cost is roughly double our provider ledger

Daily cost, OpenAI vs MSX

OpenAI admin cost MSX provider ledger

2026-04-06

$60.46 / $24.21

2026-04-07

$12.45 / $7.64

2026-04-08

$16.41 / $12.42

2026-04-09

$13.01 / $8.19

2026-04-10

$32.68 / $13.70

2026-04-11

$6.27 / $6.24

2026-04-12

$18.33 / $7.95

Key callouts

OpenAI actual cost: $159.61; MSX metered provider cost: $80.35.
Observed gap: $79.26, with 262.47M tokens visible to OpenAI but not reflected in provider_usage_events.
This is too large to be rounding noise. The likely causes are a mix of stale local pricing and missing request capture on the MSX side.

OpenAI line items

gpt-5.4-2026-03-05, cached input

$35.74

gpt-5.4-2026-03-05, input

$31.34

gpt-5.4-2026-03-05, output

$21.28

gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17, cached input

$26.44

gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17, input

$25.34

gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17, output

$18.94

2. Model mix

The burn is concentrated in two GPT-5.4 model variants

OpenAI project key usage

Key name	Key ID	Requests	Input tokens	Cached input
msx.dev	key_IZ66a7qz…	13,904	543.93M	496.58M

All observed admin-side usage in this window lands on the same OpenAI project key.

Model reconciliation

Model	OpenAI cost	MSX cost	Gap	MSX capture
gpt-5.4-2026-03-05	$88.36	$35.91	$52.46	40.6%
gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17	$70.72	$44.10	$26.62	62.4%
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07	$0.51	$0.34	$0.17	66.2%
web search tool calls	$0.01	$0.00	$0.01	0.0%
gpt-4o-mini-2024-07-18	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	99.9%

`gpt-5.4-2026-03-05` is materially underpriced or undercaptured in MSX. `gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17` also shows a material capture gap.

3. Top users

Two users account for most of the metered spend

Top 2 user share

35.5%

148.24M of DB-metered tokens.

Users with any topup

1

23.0% of DB-metered provider cost.

Missing-agent spend

$28.19

59 agent IDs missing from agents.

Missing-auth-user spend

$4.76

35 user IDs missing from auth.users.

Top DB-metered burners

Masked user	Tokens	Provider cost	Debited	Topups ever	Funding
benme…@gmail.com	81.90M	$18.52	$27.78	$30.00	topup
marcb…@gmail.com	66.35M	$10.00	$15.00	$0.00	starter
found…@example.com	12.27M	$8.70	$13.05	$0.00	starter
found…@example.com	10.28M	$6.54	$9.81	$0.00	starter
test-…@test.com.com	29.13M	$4.12	$6.19	$0.00	starter
r43-p…@example.com	10.69M	$4.12	$6.18	$0.00	starter
mikeg…@gmail.com	5.47M	$3.34	$5.00	$0.00	internal
mikef…@gmail.com	21.15M	$3.18	$4.76	$0.00	internal
marcb…@gmail.com	3.14M	$3.04	$4.55	$0.00	internal
javi…@saleshackers.es	7.05M	$2.79	$4.17	$0.00	starter

4. Funding coverage

Almost none of the burners actually topped up

Funding class by provider cost

Starter budget only

$40.30 across 22 users

Has any topup

$18.52 across 1 users

Internal credit only

$16.77 across 21 users

Unknown / no credit trail

$4.76 across 35 users

Only 1 user with burn in this window had any billing topup at all.
That topup-bearing user represents 23.0% of DB-metered provider cost.
The rest of the burn mostly drew from slot starter budget or internal credit, not purchased topups.

User-account classes

User class	Users	Tokens	Provider cost
non test email	22	194.38M	$47.93
example.com proof or disposable	18	48.48M	$23.44
missing auth user	35	14.20M	$4.76
proof or test named	4	30.14M	$4.21

This heuristic split is imperfect, but it shows a large share of spend tied to proof/disposable accounts or users missing from auth entirely.

5. Background founder spend

Active founders continue spending well after the last user message

Masked user	Founder	Total cost	Post-user cost	Share	Lag	Office
benme…@gmail.com	aussie-yield-finder.msx.dev	$18.52	$14.71	79.5%	4.8d	reachable
marcb…@gmail.com	deploy-ventures.msx.dev	$10.00	$9.98	99.8%	3.1d	reachable
test-…@test.com.com	brightpath-ventures.msx.dev	$4.08	$4.04	98.9%	1.3d	archived
mikef…@gmail.com	replacement-and-reship-track.msx.dev	$3.18	$3.06	96.3%	0.9d	archived
marcb…@gmail.com	buy-now-or-wait-shopping-com-2.msx.dev	$3.04	$3.04	100.0%	no user message	stopped
mikeg…@gmail.com	gentle-daily-accountability.msx.dev	$3.34	$2.78	83.2%	0.6d	archived
marcb…@gmail.com	purchase-compass.msx.dev	$1.05	$1.05	100.0%	no user message	archived
marcb…@gmail.com	purchase-timing-lab.msx.dev	$0.88	$0.88	100.0%	no user message	archived

What we can say confidently

$45.17 of founder-attributed provider cost happened after the last recorded user message in the same founder.
I found no spend in this window after `agents.archived_at` and none after `founder_trial_agents.ended_at`.
The leak pattern is therefore “active founder keeps doing work after the user stops interacting”, not “archived founder keeps burning forever”.

6. Ben case

The reported cancellation issue is visible in live spend data

Usage after subscription cancellation

Masked user	Founder	Cost after cancel	Tokens after cancel	Canceled at	Last usage
benme…@gmail.com	aussie-yield-finder.msx.dev	$8.51	42.12M	Apr 11, 2026 05:29 UTC	Apr 12, 2026 23:59 UTC

Interpretation

Ben's founder continued to spend after the slot subscription reached `canceled` with `total_slots = 0` and `consumed_slots = 1`.
Observed post-cancel spend in this window: $8.51.
This does not prove the exact trigger path, but it does prove that cancellation state and founder spend were out of sync.

7. Data integrity

Deleted agents and missing auth users materially weaken attribution

Missing agent IDs

59 distinct agent IDs in `provider_usage_events` no longer exist in `agents`.
Those rows account for $28.19 and 63.87M tokens in the same window.

Masked user	Missing agent	Provider cost	Tokens	Last usage
found…@example.com	0eba4a29…	$8.70	12.27M	Apr 06, 2026 07:40 UTC
found…@example.com	7e537454…	$6.54	10.28M	Apr 06, 2026 07:39 UTC
r43-p…@example.com	f6af506e…	$3.98	10.60M	Apr 06, 2026 09:23 UTC
missing auth user	68cc5240…	$1.33	7.20M	Apr 07, 2026 05:49 UTC
clock…@example.com	f75af710…	$1.11	6.54M	Apr 07, 2026 05:48 UTC
missing auth user	fbc518f6…	$0.89	576.3K	Apr 10, 2026 14:13 UTC
found…@example.com	3cb13030…	$0.88	2.37M	Apr 06, 2026 09:22 UTC
torni…@example.com	1b644ee5…	$0.72	1.90M	Apr 06, 2026 09:24 UTC

Missing auth users

35 user IDs with spend are absent from `auth.users`.
That missing-auth cohort represents $4.76 of provider cost.
This makes “which customer spent this?” materially less reliable than it should be.

Ledger mix in this window

Direction	Bucket	Reference	Events	Amount
debit	founder_ai	provider_usage_event	8,028	$113.21
credit	internal_credit	founder_trial	26	$155.00
credit	slot_starter_budget	billing_purchase_grant	13	$195.00
debit	product_opex	runtime_capability_call	6	$0.06
credit	slot_starter_budget	stripe_subscription_update	2	$30.00
credit	billing_topup	billing_purchase_grant	1	$15.00

8. Conclusions

What needs operator attention next

Fix the cancellation-to-founder gating path first. Ben's founder is still the clearest real-customer example of spend continuing after cancellation state flipped.
Repair the provider-cost model, especially for `gpt-5.4-2026-03-05`, before relying on MSX-side cost dashboards.
Close the request-capture gap for `gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17`; OpenAI sees far more tokens than `provider_usage_events` records.
Stop deleting or otherwise losing agent/user attribution rows if the usage ledger depends on them for later burn analysis.
Instrument founder background work so we can distinguish real user-driven runs from orphan loops or periodic jobs without inference.

Method: OpenAI Admin Costs + Completions Usage APIs, plus live Supabase reads from `provider_usage_events`, `budget_ledger_events`, `agents`, `founder_trial_agents`, `agent_messages`, `billing_slot_subscriptions`, `user_capacity`, and `auth.users`.