faq
A few honest answers.
In-process vs proxy, keys, outages, and how we sit next to observability and gateways. Deeper SDK FAQ lives in the docs.
Will TokenSentinel send my provider keys to your cloud?
No. The SDK runs in-process. Your Anthropic / OpenAI / Gemini / Bedrock keys never touch us. Optional Cloud receives only the structured waste events your SDK chooses to send, after the default redaction pipeline.
What happens during a cloud outage?
The SDK is failure-isolated. Cloud unreachable means event shipping and the dashboard degrade; your agents keep running. Policy fail-mode is configurable — open by default (safer for prod), closed if you need it.
Can I self-host today?
The SDK is OSS and self-contained — install and run offline in log mode with no account. Hosted Cloud is the optional path for Team/Pro. Self-hosted Docker/Helm is an Enterprise SKU for design partners — talk to us on the partners form.
What are composite signals?
Pro cloud multi-rule patterns on the event stream: lost_agent, runaway_retrieval, and zombie_loop. They are not part of the free in-process SDK rule set — Free and Team still run the same 15 deterministic rules; Pro layers composites (and judge/drift) on top in the cloud.
How is this different from Helicone / Langfuse / LangSmith?
Different problem. They tell you what your bill was. We detect mid-run waste patterns and give your code a callback to intervene (FinOps intervention, not another trace UI). You can run TokenSentinel alongside any of them.
How is this different from Alephant / Bifrost / Portkey?
Those are proxy/gateway layers — traffic and often keys go through their hop. TokenSentinel is in-process: wrap your client, no BYO-key routing, rules run offline in log mode. Different layer of the stack; use a gateway and still wrap with TokenSentinel if you want.
Why events instead of tokens (for Cloud)?
Per-token billing recreates the bill anxiety the product relieves — we'd be financially aligned with you using more tokens, not fewer. Events are the units that fire your rules; pricing on them keeps the incentives clean. The open-source SDK remains free forever.
More detail on rules, modes, and the public API: docs FAQ →