Agents & Indicators

Understanding agents and indicators is fundamental to using Paygent effectively. They’re the building blocks of how Paygent tracks and bills for AI usage.

Scenario: Meet Sarah, who runs an e-commerce AI platform. Her system has a customer support chatbot, a product recommendation engine, and an email generator. Each of these does different things, costs different amounts, and provides different value. How does she track them separately?

Solution: With Paygent, Sarah defines each AI component as an Agent and each action as an Indicator:

// Customer Support Chatbot (Agent)
await paygentClient.sendUsage(
  'customer-support-bot',     // Agent ID
  'customer-123',              // Customer ID
  'message-sent',              // Indicator (action performed)
  usageData
);
// Product Recommendation Engine (Agent)
await paygentClient.sendUsage(
  'recommendation-engine',     // Different Agent
  'customer-123',
  'recommendations-generated', // Different Indicator
  usageData
);
// Email Generator (Agent)
await paygentClient.sendUsage(
  'email-generator',           // Another Agent
  'customer-123',
  'email-composed',            // Another Indicator
  usageData
);

Now Sarah can see exactly how much each AI component costs and which actions her customers use most.

Result: Sarah can now track that her chatbot handles 10,000 messages/month, recommendations generate 50,000 suggestions, and the email tool creates 2,000 emails. She bills customers accurately based on what they actually use.

🤖 What is an Agent?

An Agent is a distinct AI component or workflow in your application. Think of it as “who is doing the work.”

Examples:

• Customer support chatbot
• Code review assistant
• Content generator
• Data analyzer

⚡ What is an Indicator?

An Indicator is a specific action performed by an agent. Think of it as “what work was done.”

Examples:

• message-sent
• article-generated
• code-reviewed
• report-created