The Workstation Blog
FinOps
Posts tagged FinOps.
Trading costs with agents: what an AI agent really costs to run
AI agents move cost rather than remove it. Learn why the token bill grows with the square of loop steps, how caching and compaction bend the curve, and a playbook for pricing, budgeting and capping an agent before it reaches production.
The energy cost of LLM code optimisation, and when it pays back
A 2026 study found LLM-optimised code used more energy per run than the human reference in 42 of 44 configurations. Learn the break-even rule, how to measure joules per run on Linux, and a workflow for keeping only the rewrites that pay back.
Cutting LLM Inference Costs: Lessons from Cloudflare's 68% Cut
Cloudflare cut its AI code reviewer's average cost per review by 68%. Here is what that number does and does not mean, and a measured playbook for your own workload: prompt cache breakpoints, fewer agent calls, right-sized models and batch.
Observability Is Not Optional: Make It a Business Standard
Why fragmented monitoring creates blind spots, duplicate spend, and slow incidents — and how to make centralised observability a non-negotiable company standard.
Balinder WaliaRead 
Stop paying for idle CI: GitLab Runners on Kubernetes
Most teams pay for CI as if every night were still Monday morning. GitLab Runners on Kubernetes flip that: ephemeral job pods, scale up under load, scale down when quiet.
Balinder WaliaRead 
Uncovering LLM Bottlenecks: Observability, OTEL & Cost Control
Workstation on uncovering LLM agent bottlenecks with observability: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus/Grafana/Thanos, Langfuse — with clear pros/cons, cost levers, and usage metrics that protect margins.
Balinder WaliaRead 
Claude Models Compared: Haiku vs Sonnet vs Opus vs Fable 5 (Mythos 5)
Choose the right Claude model tier: Haiku for fast routing, Sonnet for daily work, Opus for complex agentic coding, and Fable 5 for long-horizon autonomy. Includes a token-budget router blueprint.
Balinder WaliaRead 
Claude Fable 5: The Complete Guide to Anthropic's Mythos-Class Model
Claude Fable 5 is Anthropic's Mythos-class frontier model for long-horizon agents. Community reactions, YouTube reviews, when to use it, and how to save tokens.
Balinder WaliaRead 
Can an AI System Process and File a Self Assessment Tax Return to HMRC Automatically?
Can AI file UK Self Assessment to HMRC? FileMyTax shows bank PDF → extract → classify → calculate → MTD with a human gate. Built by Workstation for CognoAI. Not tax advice.
Balinder WaliaRead 
Building a VAT Return System with Claude Code from Your Invoices and Expenses Database
I rebuilt my quarterly UK VAT return as a Claude Code project: read invoices + expenses from Postgres, classify each line by VAT treatment, compute HMRC Box 1 to 9 with a deterministic Python engine, dry-run, then submit to MTD with a human approval gate.
Balinder WaliaRead