Engineering · June 17, 2026 · Updated November 1, 2026 · 5 min read

Usage you can read locally, including the tokens you paid for twice

/usage is a terminal dashboard built from MendCode’s own call records on your machine. Its Waste tab finds the calls that re-sent context after the cache went cold, a model switch or a changed prompt.

Generated editorial cover. Product screenshots inside the post are unedited.

The dashboard

/usage opens a terminal dashboard with seven tabs: Overview, Limits, Tokens, Models, Tools, Sessions and Waste. Overview has four stat tiles, token activity by day and the top sessions; [ and ] choose 30, 90 or 365 days. Optional widgets (token mix, subscription usage, peak pressure and more) start off. Everything comes from the daemon on your machine.

 Usage Insights    s Scope · p Project · C Widgets · W Weather · tab/1-6 Report · ←→ Day · Esc Back  MendCode · global stats · daily · 365d                                                 1.5B tokens   1 Overview    2 Limits    3 Tokens    4 Models    5 Tools    6 Sessions                            ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────  ┌─ Tokens ──────────────────────────────────────┐ ┌─ Sessions ───────────────────────────────────┐  │ 1.5B · 66% cache                              │ │ 628                                          │  │ Peak 2025-12-15 · 14.2M                       │ │ 294 active days                              │  └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘ └──────────────────────────────────────────────┘                                                                                                      ┌─ AI time ─────────────────────────────────────┐ ┌─ Prompts / words ────────────────────────────┐  │ 1h 30m                                        │ │ 40 prompts                                   │  │ Longest response unavailable                  │ │ 3,100 words                                  │  └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘ └──────────────────────────────────────────────┘                                                                                                      ┌─ Token activity · daily ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐  │     Nov Dec     Jan     Feb     Mar       Apr     May       Jun     Jul     Aug       Sep      │  │ Mo  ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■  │  │ Tu  ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■  │  │ We  ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■  │  │ Th  ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ▣ ■  │  │ Fr  ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■  │  │ Sa  ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■  │  │ Su  ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■    │  │     Less ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ More                                                                        │  │ 2026-09-17 · 8.6M tok · 2 sessions                                                             │  │ In 2.4M / Out 360K / Reas 120K / Cache 5.4M+300K                                               │  │ 0 prompts · 0 words · files unavailable                                                        │  │ AI 0s · Tools 0s                                                                               │  └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

/usage, drawn from MendCode’s own render code.

Waste

A long session is cheap while the provider’s prompt cache holds and expensive when it does not. The Waste tab shows where a range’s tokens were paid for twice, from MendCode’s own call records only: nothing is read from another program’s logs. A call is judged against the call before it in its session, when that one held at least 20K tokens and nothing compacted in between.

What it finds

Finding	Means
Cold return	The cache read fell under half of what it could read, after a pause of at least 5 minutes (60 after a 1-hour write)
Break	The same miss within the cache’s lifetime: something in front of the conversation changed
Switch	The call ran on another model, which had none of it cached

The tab also shows

What to change: each finding with its saving, marked clear, likely or up to. Savings overlap and are never added.
Where the tokens go: re-reading, cache writes, new input and output.
The five largest cold returns, and the largest or costliest conversations.

From the CLI

terminal

mendcode stats            # all-time stats, tools by calls
mendcode stats --waste    # the Waste report for the last 30 days
mendcode stats --waste --days 7 --json