Prevent Token Cost Spikes in LLM Apps with Token Budget Guard

Mostafa Hanafy — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 06:53:26 +0000

When building LLM features, token usage directly affects three things:

cost
latency
reliability

But many applications treat token usage as an afterthought until prompts grow unexpectedly or API costs spike.

I recently released an open-source utility called Token Budget Guard to help solve this.

The idea is simple: enforce token limits before making expensive LLM API calls.

Instead of sending a request blindly to a provider, you can apply guardrails such as:

fail fast if the request exceeds a limit
automatically trim context
warn when the request goes over budget

Example:

import { withTokenBudget } from "token-budget-guard";

await withTokenBudget({
  maxTokens: 2000,
  prompt,
  context,
  expectedOutputTokens: 200,
  strategy: "trim_context",
  call: async ({ prompt, context }) => aiClient(prompt, context),
});

This helps keep AI systems predictable as prompts and context grow over time.

The library also includes provider adapters for:

OpenAI
Anthropic
Gemini
AWS Bedrock
Azure OpenAI
Cohere

It’s intentionally small and focused so it can fit easily into existing AI pipelines.

GitHub https://github.com/mostafasayed/token-budget-guard
npm https://www.npmjs.com/package/token-budget-guard

If you're building production AI systems, I'm curious how you're managing token budgets today.

Stop Overengineering Your TypeScript Starters

Mostafa Hanafy — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 19:01:21 +0000

If you build TypeScript projects regularly, you’ve probably experienced this:
You just want to start a simple project…
But instead you get:

30+ config files
Opinionated architecture
Framework-specific setup
Tools you don’t need
Build complexity before writing code

What should take 10 seconds takes 10 minutes.

The Problem With Most TypeScript Starters

Many templates are built with good intentions.

But they often:

Assume enterprise-level needs
Add premature abstraction
Lock you into tooling choices
Introduce unnecessary boilerplate

For small libraries, APIs, CLI tools, or experiments, this is overkill.

What I Actually Needed

Most of the time, I just want:

TypeScript configured correctly
A clean src/index.ts
tsx for fast development
Optional ESLint / Prettier
ESM or CommonJS choice
Minimal scripts

No frameworks. No magic.

Just a clean starting point.

So I Built a Minimal CLI

I created ts-package-init. a small TypeScript project initializer focused on simplicity.

It scaffolds:

Base TypeScript projects
Libraries
Backends
CLI tools
Monorepos
Minimal NestJS or Moleculer presets

All with sensible defaults.

Quick Example

npx ts-package-init my-app
cd my-app
npm run dev

That’s it.

You get:

my-app/
  package.json
  tsconfig.json
  src/
    index.ts

Clean. Minimal. Ready to build on.

Optional Features

If you need more:

npx ts-package-init api --preset backend --eslint --prettier --esm

You can:

Enable ESLint
Add Prettier
Use ESM
Select package manager
Skip install
Use interactive mode

But nothing is forced.

Design Philosophy

The goal is not to compete with full frameworks.

It’s to:

Start fast
Avoid unnecessary complexity
Keep structure predictable
Let you scale intentionally

Minimal first. Add complexity later.

v1.0.0

The core scaffolding logic is now stable.

Future improvements will focus on:

Developer experience
Preset refinement
Performance
Real-world feedback

Try It

GitHub:
https://github.com/yourusername/ts-package-init

npm:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/ts-package-init

If you regularly spin up TypeScript projects, I’d genuinely appreciate feedback.

Forem: Mostafa Hanafy