Shawnaldinho tries to make Mike's credit meter actually count

On the base project, that gauge was pure theatre: nothing added up a user's activity and nothing checked the balance before a chat ran, so it sat at zero and enforced nothing. Shawnaldinho's fix pulls the credit logic into one place: an operator sets a monthly message cap, the system checks it before answering, blocks with a clean error when the budget is spent, and only counts a message once it succeeds - a failed reply costs the user nothing. Credits tick once per message you send, not once per behind-the-scenes tool call, so the balance stays legible. Enforcement is off by default; an operator opts in by setting a real cap. He flagged this as closing a specific gap named in an outside critique of the project, but the PR was closed after several weeks without merging, so none of it is live.