import Link from 'next/link';
import { ArrowLeft, Calendar, Clock } from 'lucide-react';

export const metadata = {
  title: "Start at 1 Credit: Smarter AI Agent Tool Pricing",
  description: "Stop guessing tool costs. Start at 1 credit in Observe mode, measure real usage, then refine policy and enforce with confidence.",
  alternates: { canonical: 'https://satgate.io/blog/start-at-1-credit-economic-policy' },
  keywords: ['AI agent economics', 'tool pricing strategy', 'cost management AI', 'economic policy agents', 'SatGate observe mode', 'AI cost optimization', 'agent budget management'],
  openGraph: {
    title: 'Start at 1 Credit: Smarter AI Agent Tool Pricing',
    description: 'Start AI agent tools at 1 credit in Observe mode, measure real usage, then refine pricing policy before enforcement.',
    url: 'https://satgate.io/blog/start-at-1-credit-economic-policy',
    type: 'article',
    publishedTime: '2026-04-07T00:00:00Z',
  },
  twitter: {
    card: 'summary_large_image',
    title: 'Start at 1 Credit: Smarter AI Agent Tool Pricing',
    description: 'Use Observe mode to price AI agent tools from real usage before moving to Control and Charge.',
  },
};

export default function StartAt1CreditBlogPage() {
  const articleJsonLd = {
    '@context': 'https://schema.org',
    '@type': 'TechArticle',
    headline: 'Start at 1 Credit: A Smarter Way to Price AI Agent Tools',
    description: 'Stop guessing tool costs. Start at 1 credit in Observe mode, measure real usage, then refine policy and enforce with confidence.',
    url: 'https://satgate.io/blog/start-at-1-credit-economic-policy',
    datePublished: '2026-04-07',
    dateModified: '2026-05-04',
    author: { '@type': 'Organization', name: 'SatGate' },
    publisher: { '@type': 'Organization', name: 'SatGate', url: 'https://satgate.io' },
    about: [
      { '@type': 'Thing', name: 'AI agent economics' },
      { '@type': 'Thing', name: 'Observe mode' },
      { '@type': 'Thing', name: 'tool pricing policy' },
      { '@type': 'Thing', name: 'AI agent cost optimization' },
    ],
  };

  const faqJsonLd = {
    '@context': 'https://schema.org',
    '@type': 'FAQPage',
    mainEntity: [
      {
        '@type': 'Question',
        name: 'Why start AI agent tool pricing at 1 credit?',
        acceptedAnswer: {
          '@type': 'Answer',
          text: 'Starting every tool at 1 credit in Observe mode avoids guessing and lets teams see real agent behavior before price signals distort tool choice.',
        },
      },
      {
        '@type': 'Question',
        name: 'When should teams move from Observe mode to Control mode?',
        acceptedAnswer: {
          '@type': 'Answer',
          text: 'Teams should move to Control mode after comparing observed usage with provider invoices, repricing tools based on real cost, and tuning agent behavior while enforcement is still non-blocking.',
        },
      },
      {
        '@type': 'Question',
        name: 'How does tool pricing change AI agent behavior?',
        acceptedAnswer: {
          '@type': 'Answer',
          text: 'Tool pricing gives agents and teams an economic signal. Expensive tools become intentional, cheap tools handle routine work, and budgets encourage batching, caching, routing, and safer delegation.',
        },
      },
    ],
  };

  return (
    <div className="min-h-screen bg-black text-gray-100 font-sans">
      <script type="application/ld+json" dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: JSON.stringify(articleJsonLd) }} />
      <script type="application/ld+json" dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: JSON.stringify(faqJsonLd) }} />
      <div className="max-w-3xl mx-auto px-6 py-16">
        <Link href="/blog" className="text-gray-500 hover:text-white flex items-center gap-2 transition mb-8">
          <ArrowLeft size={18} /> Back to Blog
        </Link>
        
        <header className="mb-12">
          <div className="flex flex-wrap gap-2 mb-4">
            <span className="px-2 py-1 rounded-full bg-purple-900/30 border border-purple-500/30 text-purple-300 text-xs font-mono">Economic Policy</span>
            <span className="px-2 py-1 rounded-full bg-cyan-900/30 border border-cyan-500/30 text-cyan-300 text-xs font-mono">Best Practices</span>
            <span className="px-2 py-1 rounded-full bg-green-900/30 border border-green-500/30 text-green-300 text-xs font-mono">AI Agents</span>
          </div>
          
          <h1 className="text-4xl font-bold mb-4">Start at 1 Credit: A Smarter Way to Price AI Agent Tools</h1>
          
          <p className="text-xl text-gray-400 mb-6 italic">
            Most teams guess wrong when pricing AI tools upfront. Here's a better way: start everything at 1 credit, measure real usage patterns, refine policy from evidence in Observe mode, then let data, not assumptions, guide Control.
          </p>
          
          <div className="flex items-center gap-4 text-sm text-gray-500">
            <span className="flex items-center gap-1"><Calendar size={14} /> April 7, 2026</span>
            <span className="flex items-center gap-1"><Clock size={14} /> 5 min read</span>
          </div>
        </header>

        <article className="prose prose-invert prose-lg max-w-none">
          
          <p className="text-gray-300 text-lg leading-relaxed">
            You just deployed SatGate. You're staring at the MCP Cost Profile screen, trying to decide: should web search cost 1 credit or 10? Should image generation be 50 credits or 500? Should that internal database query be basically free at 0.1 credits?
          </p>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed">
            Stop guessing. There's a better way.
          </p>

          <h2 className="text-2xl font-bold text-white mt-12 mb-4">The Problem with Pricing in a Vacuum</h2>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed">
            When you assign arbitrary prices before seeing real usage, you create noise that hides the signal. If one tool costs 100x another, you can't tell whether agents avoid it because it's genuinely less useful or just because you made it expensive.
          </p>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed">
            Even worse, you might accidentally incentivize inefficient behavior. Maybe you made file reads cheap and web searches expensive, so agents start downloading entire websites instead of searching for specific information. Congratulations, you just 10x'd your bandwidth costs to save a few credits.
          </p>

          <h2 className="text-2xl font-bold text-white mt-8 mb-4">The 1-Credit Baseline Strategy</h2>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed">
            Here's what works: <strong className="text-white">In Observe mode, price every route and tool at exactly 1 credit.</strong>
          </p>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed">
            This creates a level playing field where you can see what agents actually do when price isn't a factor. You get pure usage data: which tools agents reach for most, which routes handle the most traffic, which operations cluster together.
          </p>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed">
            After a week of observation, compare your SatGate usage data to your actual provider invoices. That image generation tool that's only 5% of requests? It might be driving 60% of your OpenAI bill. The web search that's 40% of requests? Maybe it's costing pennies through a bulk API deal.
          </p>

          <h2 className="text-2xl font-bold text-white mt-8 mb-4">From Observation to Policy Refinement to Control</h2>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed">
            Once you have real data, don&apos;t jump straight from passive observation to hard enforcement. There&apos;s an important middle step: <strong className="text-white">policy refinement inside Observe mode.</strong>
          </p>

          <ul className="list-disc list-inside space-y-2 text-gray-300">
            <li><strong className="text-white">Expensive operations get higher prices.</strong> If image generation costs 12x more than text, price it at 12 credits.</li>
            <li><strong className="text-white">Risky operations get premium pricing.</strong> External API calls might warrant 5x pricing just for the security exposure.</li>
            <li><strong className="text-white">Agent behavior gets tuned before enforcement.</strong> Adjust prompts, routing, batching, caching, and workflow design while still in Observe.</li>
            <li><strong className="text-white">Bulk operations get volume discounts.</strong> Batch processing 100 items? Maybe that&apos;s 50 credits, not 100.</li>
          </ul>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed">
            This is where SatGate becomes more than a meter. You use observed usage plus provider cost analysis to shape economic policy while the system is still non-blocking. Teams can start changing behavior before budgets are enforced.
          </p>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed">
            Then switch to Control mode and assign budgets. The magic happens automatically: agents start optimizing their behavior to stretch budgets further. They batch operations, cache results, and find creative alternatives to expensive tools.
          </p>

          <h2 className="text-2xl font-bold text-white mt-8 mb-4">Example</h2>

          <div className="bg-gray-900 border border-gray-800 rounded-lg p-6 my-8">
            <h3 className="text-green-400 font-bold mb-4">Week 1: Observe Mode (everything = 1 credit)</h3>
            <ul className="text-gray-300 space-y-1 mb-6">
              <li><strong className="text-white">web_search:</strong> 7,234 calls (38%)</li>
              <li><strong className="text-white">file_read:</strong> 4,521 calls (24%)</li>
              <li><strong className="text-white">llm_completion:</strong> 3,812 calls (20%)</li>
              <li><strong className="text-white">image_generate:</strong> 765 calls (4%)</li>
              <li><strong className="text-white">code_execute:</strong> 2,644 calls (14%)</li>
            </ul>
            
            <h3 className="text-yellow-400 font-bold mb-4">Provider invoices show:</h3>
            <ul className="text-gray-300 space-y-1 mb-6">
              <li><strong className="text-white">Image API:</strong> $426 (48% of cost for 4% of usage!)</li>
              <li><strong className="text-white">LLM API:</strong> $312 (35%)</li>
              <li><strong className="text-white">Search API:</strong> $89 (10%)</li>
              <li><strong className="text-white">Compute:</strong> $62 (7%)</li>
            </ul>
            
            <h3 className="text-cyan-400 font-bold mb-4">Week 2: Observe Mode, refined from real data</h3>
            <ul className="text-gray-300 space-y-1 mb-6">
              <li><strong className="text-white">web_search:</strong> stays at 1 credit (high volume, low cost)</li>
              <li><strong className="text-white">file_read:</strong> stays at 1 credit (internal, free)</li>
              <li><strong className="text-white">llm_completion:</strong> moves to 3 credits (moderate cost)</li>
              <li><strong className="text-white">image_generate:</strong> moves to 15 credits (expensive)</li>
              <li><strong className="text-white">code_execute:</strong> moves to 2 credits (compute cost)</li>
            </ul>

            <h3 className="text-purple-400 font-bold mb-4">Behavior changes before Control</h3>
            <ul className="text-gray-300 space-y-1 mb-6">
              <li>Agents batch LLM calls instead of firing one-off requests</li>
              <li>Teams cache common lookups and route cheap work to cheaper tools</li>
              <li>Image generation becomes intentional instead of casual</li>
            </ul>

            <h3 className="text-green-400 font-bold mb-4">Week 3: Control Mode</h3>
            <ul className="text-gray-300 space-y-1">
              <li>Budgets are now enforced against a policy already shaped by real usage</li>
              <li>Control becomes a confident rollout, not a blind jump</li>
            </ul>
          </div>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed">
            The result? Before hard enforcement even started, image generation dropped to emergency-use-only, teams started batching LLM calls, and the monthly bill dropped 34% while productivity stayed constant. Control then locked in a behavior pattern that had already been proven in Observe.
          </p>

          <h2 className="text-2xl font-bold text-white mt-8 mb-4">Why This Works</h2>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed">
            Starting at 1 credit works because it respects a fundamental truth: <strong className="text-white">you don't know your actual costs until you see your actual usage.</strong>
          </p>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed">
            More importantly, it turns cost management from a blunt hammer into a steering mechanism. You're not just blocking when budgets run out. You're using Observe mode to surface real cost drivers, refine policy, and push better agent behavior before enforcement ever starts.
          </p>

          <h2 className="text-2xl font-bold text-white mt-8 mb-4">Your First Week with SatGate</h2>

          <ol className="list-decimal list-inside space-y-3 text-gray-300">
            <li><strong className="text-white">Deploy in Observe mode.</strong> Everything costs 1 credit.</li>
            <li><strong className="text-white">Let agents run normally</strong> for 3-7 days.</li>
            <li><strong className="text-white">Pull your SatGate usage report</strong> and your provider invoices.</li>
            <li><strong className="text-white">Map usage to actual costs.</strong> Find the expensive outliers.</li>
            <li><strong className="text-white">Reprice based on reality,</strong> not assumptions.</li>
            <li><strong className="text-white">Refine agent behavior in Observe mode,</strong> using the new signal to tune prompts, workflows, and tool use.</li>
            <li><strong className="text-white">Switch to Control mode</strong> once the policy already reflects real-world behavior.</li>
          </ol>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed mt-8">
            This is economic policy done right: data-driven, iterative, and grounded in actual usage patterns rather than guesswork. Start simple, measure everything, refine policy while still in Observe, then use Control to enforce what the data already taught you.
          </p>

          <p className="text-gray-300 leading-relaxed">
            Your agents will thank you. Your CFO definitely will.
          </p>

          <section className="not-prose mt-16 rounded-2xl border border-gray-800 bg-gray-950 p-8">
            <p className="mb-2 text-sm font-mono uppercase tracking-wide text-green-300">FAQ</p>
            <h2 className="mb-6 text-2xl font-bold text-white">AI agent tool pricing questions</h2>
            <div className="space-y-5">
              {[
                ['Why start AI agent tool pricing at 1 credit?', 'Starting every tool at 1 credit in Observe mode avoids guessing and lets teams see real agent behavior before price signals distort tool choice.'],
                ['When should teams move from Observe mode to Control mode?', 'Move to Control mode after comparing observed usage with provider invoices, repricing tools based on real cost, and tuning agent behavior while enforcement is still non-blocking.'],
                ['How does tool pricing change AI agent behavior?', 'Tool pricing gives agents and teams an economic signal. Expensive tools become intentional, cheap tools handle routine work, and budgets encourage batching, caching, routing, and safer delegation.'],
              ].map(([question, answer]) => (
                <div key={question} className="border-t border-gray-800 pt-5 first:border-t-0 first:pt-0">
                  <h3 className="mb-2 text-lg font-bold text-white">{question}</h3>
                  <p className="leading-relaxed text-gray-400">{answer}</p>
                </div>
              ))}
            </div>
          </section>

          <div className="mt-16 p-6 bg-gradient-to-br from-purple-900/20 to-cyan-900/20 border border-purple-500/30 rounded-xl">
            <p className="text-lg font-semibold text-white mb-3">Ready to implement smarter economic policy?</p>
            <p className="text-gray-400 mb-4">SatGate makes it easy to start with observation, learn from data, and control costs intelligently.</p>
            <Link 
              href="/"
              className="inline-flex items-center gap-2 bg-purple-600 hover:bg-purple-700 text-white px-4 py-2 rounded-lg font-medium transition"
            >
              Start your free trial <ArrowLeft size={16} className="rotate-180" />
            </Link>
          </div>
          
        </article>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
}