Credits

Credits meter successful operations across cases, playbooks, tasks, records, and suggestions. Failed or invalid calls are never charged. A workspace has one shared balance regardless of seat count.

Credit bands

• 0 credits — Explore: Public case, record, popularity, and handoff-graph reads and public playbook list/get are free on Web, CLI, API, and MCP, without login.
• 1 credit — Use: Private reads and lists, versions, drafts, aliases, and records.
• 2 credits — Coordinate: Change access, assignment, handoffs, lifecycle state, or a resolution.
• 5 credits — Create: Create or publish durable artifacts, start cases, create tasks or suggestions, set an alias, or run relevance search.
• Generate: Operations that use an AI model consume credits according to the tokens used.

Public access on Web, CLI, and API is subject to fair-use rate limits. The CLI stores a random anonymous ID and sends it with requests; API clients can persist the X-Epismo-Anonymous-Id response header and send it on later requests. This ID is for analytics and rate limiting, not authentication or authorization.

Surface billing policies

• Public case reads: The current title, input, records, and readable handoffs are free to read. Tasks, assignment, and collaborator identities require work access.
• Public playbook list/get: Free on every surface. Anonymous access returns public data only.
• Search: Always 5 credits and requires authentication. Search is not part of the free public browsing allowance.
• Web UI: Ordinary page loads and detail/list reads stay free. Search and writes use the normal price.
• API / CLI / MCP: Private reads and all authenticated operations use the operation price below.

Credit costs by operation

Case

case review and auto reviews (autoReview) charge that token-based cost to the case billing account captured at start. When the case home enables web search for review (AI settings), each Google Search query used during the review adds to that charge. When the home disallows Epismo AI, manual review is rejected and automatic jobs skip without a charge.

A case has one saved Brief, including after it is closed: a sentence of up to 280 characters. An archived case cannot be changed. It appears on case reads and lists as brief (updatedAt, content); reading never generates it. Any case editor can set it with case brief set / epismo_case_brief_set (PUT /v1/cases/{caseId}/brief, non-empty content required), delete it with case brief delete / epismo_case_brief_delete (DELETE /v1/cases/{caseId}/brief), or generate it with case brief generate / epismo_case_brief_generate (POST /v1/cases/{caseId}/brief). Generation runs synchronously and saves the sentence without appending a timeline record. Replay the same idempotency key to receive the Brief that call wrote. Set and delete are update operations costing 2 credits each to the acting user's active workspace, or personal account when no workspace is selected; generation charges token-priced credits to the case billing account captured at start, requires Epismo AI to be enabled, and does not use web search. Reviews do not update the Brief. Connected evidence is included only when all readers of the destination case can read it. Public readers also see the saved Brief.

Public Cases publish the current title, input, Tasks, Records, saved Brief, and readable handoffs, including later additions. Public account references for authors and assignees remain visible; private grants, linked sources, and private configuration are omitted. Public visibility grants reading only. Explicit viewers can also read private Cases and their linked sources; writes require editing.

Public case reads cost 0 credits without login on Web, CLI, API, and MCP. Work-detail reads on API / CLI / MCP bundle supporting reads into one 1-credit case get; ordinary Web reads remain free.

External sources

Linking and unlinking are charged when the operation succeeds. Linking includes the first capture. Subsequent manual and automatic updates cost 1 credit per completed capture.

All charges use the linked case's billing account, whether the operation comes from Web, CLI, MCP, or API. Linking and unlinking check the balance before changing state.

Later captures are charged even when the content is unchanged. Requesting a capture, waiting, failures, and retries incur no charge. Pagination does not increase the cost. Multiple requests combined into one capture cost 1 credit.

Closed cases refresh only on manual requests. Reading saved content does not incur a refresh charge.

Task

Record

Playbook

playbook get is a continuation-oriented read. Its response includes the playbook, its open suggestions (open, applied, and declined), its recent versions, and the aliases pointing at it. Those supporting reads are bundled into the same playbook get — free for a public playbook, 1 credit for a private one — rather than charged separately; the ordinary Web detail page stays free either way.

Playbook alias

Playbook suggestion

Insufficient balance

Higher-value operations are checked before execution. If the active personal or workspace balance is insufficient, the call fails with 402 Payment Required and is not charged. Lower-cost usage may appear as shortfall and is reclaimed from the next grant. Purchase more from Credit management, or switch to another context.