[est. 0.5–2h · ~10k–100k tok · ~$0–2] Announce aiuse 3.0.7: multi-source quota ranking for people and agents

[djbclark]

Summary

Operator checklist and draft copy for the first public announcement of aiuse 3.0.7 — the current stable release on GitHub, PyPI, and Homebrew. It is a multi-provider CLI that answers a practical question: which paid AI quota should I use next before it resets?

Do not post automatically. This issue is a current, operator-reviewed announcement kit; choose venues and adapt wording to their rules and your voice.

Current product positioning

aiuse combines live local quota/balance collectors into one ranked terminal report. It is deliberately neither a request router nor another menu-bar percentage display.

• Pace-scores subscription windows as use, slow, mid, or empty.
• Keeps prepaid balances separate: positive non-expiring balances are n/a; zero/negative balances are visibly empty.
• Cross-checks live readings from the installed source tools and surfaces disagreement instead of silently merging it.
• Treats OpenCode Go quota and OpenCode Zen prepaid balance as distinct services. Zen has an optional native billing collector alongside CodexBar.
• aiuse credential refresh opencode-zen --from chrome validates an OpenCode browser session before saving it through SecretSpec; ordinary collection does not open Chrome or read its cookie store.
• Provides --json, suggest --json, status, and loopback serve so shell prompts, cron, and AI agents can make one compact local call instead of opening dashboards and reinterpreting reset bars.

The tool composes authenticated collectors already on PATH (cswap, CodexBar, caut, OpenUsage.ai, OpenUsage.sh, and tokscale); its optional native Zen path is intentionally narrowly scoped.

Links

• Repo: https://github.com/djbclark/aiuse
• Current release: https://github.com/djbclark/aiuse/releases/tag/v3.0.7
• PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/aiuse/3.0.7/
• Documentation index: https://github.com/djbclark/aiuse/blob/main/docs/index.md
• JSON contract: https://github.com/djbclark/aiuse/blob/main/docs/json-contract.md
• Source coverage: https://github.com/djbclark/aiuse/blob/main/docs/source-coverage.md

Suggested initial venues

Priority	Venue	Angle
1	Hacker News — Show HN	Multi-provider CLI and useful local agent interface. Title must start Show HN:.
2	Lobsters (if eligible)	Small Unix/Python tool, structured JSON, no hosted service.
3	r/commandline	Terminal workflow and --json/cron integration. Follow self-promotion rules.
Optional	Personal blog, Bluesky, Mastodon, or Indie Hackers	A short build note pointing to the repo.

Avoid leading with one-vendor communities: the useful distinction is portfolio ranking across services, not a single provider dashboard.

Draft copy

Show HN

Title: Show HN: aiuse – rank AI coding quotas before unused capacity resets

Body / first comment:

I pay for several overlapping coding subscriptions and API balances. Existing menu-bar tools show individual bars, but I still had to decide which quota to use next before it reset.

aiuse pulls live local readings from the tools I already use, cross-checks them, and prints a priority ladder: depleted capacity, prepaid balances, quotas to pace, and quotas worth burning now. It keeps OpenCode Go and Zen separate, and has --json, suggest, status, and a loopback API for scripts or local agents.

It is not a router or hosted dashboard. It is a local CLI that turns many authenticated quota sources into one decision.

Install: pipx install aiuse (Homebrew tap also documented)

https://github.com/djbclark/aiuse

Short social / personal-post version

Released aiuse 3.0.7: a local CLI that ranks which AI coding quota to use before it resets. It cross-checks existing local collectors, separates OpenCode Go from Zen, and exposes compact --json output for scripts and agents. https://github.com/djbclark/aiuse

Checklist

• Pick a first neutral venue (Show HN recommended).
• Re-read the venue rules and edit the draft for that community.
• Post manually.
• Comment here with URLs and any useful feedback.
• Close after the first announcement wave.

Related

• docs/next-options.md
• The source-expansion backlog: [est. 4–12h · ~0.3–1M tok · ~$3–20] Add a second DeepSeek prepaid-balance source #16 (DeepSeek), [est. 4–12h · ~0.3–1M tok · ~$3–20] Add a second OpenRouter account-credit source #17 (OpenRouter). [est. 8–20h · ~0.5–2M tok · ~$5–40] Restore Groq coverage with two live client sources #18 (Groq) closed 2026-08-02, resolved upstream.

[djbclark]

Pre-flight polish done outside this issue:

• GitHub repo description, homepage, and topics set on https://github.com/djbclark/aiuse
• Handoff loose-ends scan refreshed (221 tests, clean main)

Still operator-gated: actually posting the announcement copy.