Vantage is a free, open-source cost and usage monitor, guardrail and session log for coding agents. Start your agent with vantage run <agent> and work as usual: Vantage shows what the session costs and how much of your limit is left, asks before the agent touches the files and commands you care about, warns you when a secret is sent to the API, and records everything so you can look back. Everything stays on your machine. Vantage sends no telemetry and changes nothing in your agent's setup.
Why?
Limits arrive without warning. On a subscription, you find out you hit the 5-hour limit when the agent stops mid-task. Vantage shows your quota live, forecasts whether your pace lasts until the reset, and warns you before you hit it.
"Allow everything" or "ask every time". Vantage lets you allow npm test, ask before git push --force, and ask before anything reads .env.
Secrets leave your machine silently. When the agent reads a .env file, the password goes to the API with the next request. Vantage tells you right away what it was and where it came from, so you can rotate it.
What did it actually do? After a long session it is hard to tell what changed. Vantage ends every session with the files it changed and keeps a searchable timeline of prompts, replies and tool calls.
Features
Cost and limits, live. Tokens, estimated cost at the official list prices of Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, and on a subscription the 5-hour and weekly quota with a forecast.
Budgets. Past a cost or quota limit you set, every action needs your approval.
Approvals by action type, file and command. Allow, warn, ask or deny file reads, writes, shell commands and network access, or specific files and commands.
Alerts in the chat. Secret warnings, low quota and budgets appear in the agent's chat, right after the reply.
Live view. vantage watch in a second terminal shows what the agent is doing, from any folder, and several sessions side by side.
Session replay, stats and search. Every prompt, reply and tool call as a timeline; usage over days and projects; find the session that read a file or ran a command.
Change summary. In a git repository, every session ends with the files it changed. Or run fully isolated in a separate git worktree.
Project memory. Decisions and conventions in .vantage/memory/, given to the agent at every start.
is this more of a review after the fact, or can I actually block a change before it happens? the "control" part is what I'm curious about.
being open source is the right call for something that sits between an agent and your keys, nobody should have to trust a closed binary for that. question on the guardrail side: does it block the action before the agent reads the secret, or does it let the read happen and just flag it in the session log after the fact? for us the scary case isn't the agent leaking a key in its output, it's the agent quietly using a live key to hit a paid API in a loop, so catching it before the call matters more than logging it afterward.
The .env secret detection is the thing that got me, that's such a real footgun with coding agents and nobody was catching it. Congrats on the launch, this fills a gap that's been quietly costing people money and security for a while now.
About vantage.ai on Product Hunt
“See and control what your coding agent does.”
vantage.ai launched on Product Hunt on September 28th, 2026 and earned 80 upvotes and 9 comments, placing #15 on the daily leaderboard. Vantage is a free, open-source cost and usage monitor, guardrail and session log for coding agents.
vantage.ai was featured in Software Engineering (43.1k followers), Developer Tools (520.2k followers), GitHub (41.4k followers) and Vibe coding (683 followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 124.6k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted vantage.ai?
vantage.ai was hunted by Jovan. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how vantage.ai stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Jovan
Vantage is a free, open-source cost and usage monitor, guardrail and session log for coding agents. Start your agent with vantage run <agent> and work as usual: Vantage shows what the session costs and how much of your limit is left, asks before the agent touches the files and commands you care about, warns you when a secret is sent to the API, and records everything so you can look back. Everything stays on your machine. Vantage sends no telemetry and changes nothing in your agent's setup.
Why?
Limits arrive without warning. On a subscription, you find out you hit the 5-hour limit when the agent stops mid-task. Vantage shows your quota live, forecasts whether your pace lasts until the reset, and warns you before you hit it.
"Allow everything" or "ask every time". Vantage lets you allow npm test, ask before git push --force, and ask before anything reads .env.
Secrets leave your machine silently. When the agent reads a .env file, the password goes to the API with the next request. Vantage tells you right away what it was and where it came from, so you can rotate it.
What did it actually do? After a long session it is hard to tell what changed. Vantage ends every session with the files it changed and keeps a searchable timeline of prompts, replies and tool calls.
Features
Cost and limits, live. Tokens, estimated cost at the official list prices of Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, and on a subscription the 5-hour and weekly quota with a forecast.
Budgets. Past a cost or quota limit you set, every action needs your approval.
Approvals by action type, file and command. Allow, warn, ask or deny file reads, writes, shell commands and network access, or specific files and commands.
Alerts in the chat. Secret warnings, low quota and budgets appear in the agent's chat, right after the reply.
Live view. vantage watch in a second terminal shows what the agent is doing, from any folder, and several sessions side by side.
Session replay, stats and search. Every prompt, reply and tool call as a timeline; usage over days and projects; find the session that read a file or ran a command.
Change summary. In a git repository, every session ends with the files it changed. Or run fully isolated in a separate git worktree.
Project memory. Decisions and conventions in .vantage/memory/, given to the agent at every start.