Burnrate

See how fast you're burning Cursor spend — without opening the dashboard.

A lightweight macOS menu bar app that shows your Cursor usage in real time, breaks it down by model, session, skill, and prompt, and notifies you when spend spikes.

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Why Burnrate?

Cursor's usage dashboard lives in the browser and always feels one tab too far away. Burnrate sits in your menu bar with a flame and a dollar amount — click it and you get the full picture: what you spent, on which models, in which chats, and whether you're in the middle of a spike.

• At-a-glance total — spend for your selected window, right in the menu bar
• Spike alerts — a macOS notification when spend crosses your threshold (default $10 / 10 min)
• Zero setup — uses your signed-in Cursor IDE session; nothing to paste, nothing stored
• Privacy-minded — no analytics by default, no model calls (it won't bump your AI usage); optional Community tab shares anonymous 24h aggregates only if you opt in

Install

Latest release, no Xcode. This downloads the current Burnrate-*.zip from Releases, installs Burnrate.app to /Applications, and opens it:

curl -fsSL https://api.github.com/repos/tomyweiss/Burnrate/releases/latest \
  | grep -o 'https://github.com/tomyweiss/Burnrate/releases/download/[^"]*Burnrate-[^"]*\.zip' \
  | head -1 \
  | xargs curl -fL -o Burnrate.zip
unzip -o Burnrate.zip
rm -rf /Applications/Burnrate.app
mv Burnrate.app /Applications/
open /Applications/Burnrate.app

Or build from a clone of main. This compiles a release binary, installs Burnrate.app to /Applications, and launches it:

git clone https://github.com/tomyweiss/Burnrate.git
cd Burnrate
bash scripts/package.sh --install --open

Side-by-side contributor build. This installs Burnrate-dev.app and does not replace /Applications/Burnrate.app:

bash scripts/package.sh --dev --install --open

Note

First launch: the app isn't Apple-notarized. If Gatekeeper blocks it, right-click the app → Open, or run:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Burnrate.app
open /Applications/Burnrate.app

Verify it can reach your usage data:

/Applications/Burnrate.app/Contents/MacOS/Tokens --status
# OK $12.40 today (67 events)

Requirements

• macOS 26 or later
• Cursor installed and signed in on the same Mac
• Xcode 26 (or Command Line Tools with the macOS 26 SDK) to build from source

Tour

Menu bar

You see	It means
Flame + $12.40	Window spend for the selected timeline
Flame + 72%	Included-pool percent for Cursor models or Other models, whichever toggle is on
Flame + $12.40 · C 72% · O 45%	Any combination of those three. C is Cursor models and O is Other models; the letters appear only when both percents are on
Flame alone	All three status-bar toggles are off
Filled flame	Recent-window spend ≥ your spike threshold
Warning triangle	Auth or API problem (last known amount still shown when possible)

The panel

The header shows the same figures you chose for the status bar (window spend and/or included-pool percents); when only percents are on, window spend appears on the line below. A burn pill shows spend in your rolling alert window (e.g. last 10 minutes), and an hourly/daily sparkline shows the shape of spend across the active window. A timeline picker switches between Today, Last 24h, Last 7d, and This billing (configurable billing day and timezone).

Below that, six tabs slice the same window:

Tab	What it shows
Models	Cost share per model; expand for token detail and per-session rows
Sessions	Chats across models, with titles and workspace names from local Cursor data; drill into a session for its prompts, subagents, and local conversation log path when available
Skills	Cost per slash command, with total / average / median views
Community	Opt-in anonymous 24h spend rank vs other sharers (share-to-view)
Feed	Every prompt with its attributed cost, tokens, duration, and models
Bench	Scatter chart comparing models, skills, or sessions on cost, speed, and volume — top-right is best

Settings

Timeline window, billing day, timezone, poll interval, spike threshold / window / cooldown, launch at login, which status-bar figures to show (window spend, Cursor models percent, Other models percent), blur sensitive content (for demos and screen shares), test notification, and updates.

How it works

1. Loads your local Cursor session from the desktop app (state.vscdb) or Agent CLI login (~/.cursor/auth.json / Keychain cursor-access-token)
2. Polls POST https://cursor.com/api/dashboard/get-filtered-usage-events for events in the selected window
3. Sums Cursor's chargedCents for totals, sparkline buckets, models, sessions, skills, and prompts
4. Resolves chat titles and workspaces from local composer metadata when available

Costs are Cursor-reported charges from usage events, not a hand-rolled price estimate. Full behavior: CAPABILITIES.md.

Privacy & security

• Reads cursorAuth/accessToken from Cursor's local SQLite DB, or the Agent CLI login token, on each refresh — never written to Burnrate's own storage or Keychain
• Fetches usage over HTTPS from Cursor's dashboard endpoints using that session
• Session names and workspace folders come from local Cursor composer metadata (and cloud agent cache for bc-* sessions)
• No analytics; no model/API calls that consume Cursor usage
• Community (opt-in): uploads anonymous rolling 24h spend + per-model costs to the Burnrate community API when you enable sharing; never session titles, prompts, or Cursor identity. Turning sharing off deletes your server row. You only see cohort data if you share.
• Self-updates use Sparkle (EdDSA). Auto-check is daily. Burnrate-dev does not auto-update from GitHub

Self-updates

Production Burnrate.app uses Sparkle 2:

1. Checks the Sparkle appcast (appcast.xml on main) once a day
2. You confirm; Sparkle verifies the EdDSA signature and replaces the running app
3. The app relaunches

Use Settings → Check for Updates…. Builds are not notarized; if macOS blocks a new build, right-click → Open or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine on the app.

Burnrate-dev never auto-updates from GitHub (that would overwrite a local contributor build with Burnrate.app).

Do not commit a Sparkle private key. Tom generates the pair with generate_keys on his Mac. Clients that never installed the Sparkle bridge release cannot jump to this tag.

Old minisign-only clients cannot update to this version — they need the bridge GitHub Release first. burnrate.pub is kept so old zips can still be verified by hand. Keep burnrate.key locally until this tag is out; then archive it if you want.

Limitations

• Relies on Cursor's undocumented dashboard API — it can change or break without notice
• Individual / personal session only (the account signed into Cursor on this Mac)
• Longer windows (7d, billing cycle) may hit the API pagination cap (~4000 events) for heavy users
• Not an official Cursor product; totals may differ slightly from the website
• Not notarized for distribution outside building from source

Development

swift build
bash scripts/package.sh --open

Side-by-side contributor build (does not overwrite /Applications/Burnrate.app):

bash scripts/package.sh --dev --install --open
# or: make install-dev

This installs Burnrate-dev.app with bundle id com.tomyweiss.burnrate.dev. The menu bar keeps the normal $ amount and adds a small gray dot next to the flame; the panel shows an orange DEV badge. Self-updates are disabled. Version defaults to the latest git tag (override with VERSION=…).

Hot reload: rebuilds and relaunches Burnrate-dev whenever Swift sources change (debug build for speed). Ctrl-C stops the watcher.

make watch-dev
# or: bash scripts/dev-watch.sh

One-shot debug install: bash scripts/package.sh --dev --debug --install --open.

Package layout: Swift package target Tokens (internal name), shipped as Burnrate.app.

Cutting a release (maintainers)

Requires Tom's Sparkle EdDSA private key in Keychain (generate_keys). scripts/package.sh --release should run Sparkle sign_update / generate_appcast (see Release/prepare-sparkle-appcast.sh), not minisign -Sm. Do not attach .minisig as required for new tags.

Merge the public key into Resources/Sparkle.plist and inject those keys from local scripts/package.sh. Embed Sparkle.framework with Release/embed-sparkle-framework.sh.

One PR per release (changelog in the feature PR)

1. Before opening your feature PR, check the next version:

   bash scripts/release.sh --next-version
   # or: bash scripts/release.sh --dry-run

2. Add a changelog section at the top of Sources/Tokens/Resources/CHANGELOG.md in the same PR:

   ## 0.0.41
   
   - Your user-facing change description (optional commit hash)

3. Merge the feature PR to main.

4. Tag and publish (no separate changelog PR):

   bash scripts/release.sh --yes

This tags main, builds, Sparkle-signs, and uploads:

• Burnrate-x.y.z.zip

Then commit the updated appcast.xml. Do not require .minisig on new tags.

Release notes on GitHub and in the in-app change log come from the merged CHANGELOG.md section for that version.

--dry-run previews the next version and whether the changelog is already on main. Without --yes, the script can still draft a changelog and open a fallback PR if the section was not merged in the feature PR.

Manual override (hotfix or re-release to an existing version):

VERSION=0.0.7 bash scripts/package.sh --release

VERSION=v0.0.7 works the same (leading v is stripped). Requires gh auth and Tom's Sparkle private key in Keychain. The zip must contain Burnrate.app at the top level.

Contributing

Issues and PRs are welcome. Please keep changes focused; this is intentionally a small menu bar utility.

License

MIT © Tom Weiss