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name: speak-cost-tuning description: | Optimize Speak costs through tier selection, usage monitoring, and efficient lesson design. Use when analyzing Speak billing, reducing API costs, or implementing usage monitoring and budget alerts for language learning apps. Trigger with phrases like "speak cost", "speak billing", "reduce speak costs", "speak pricing", "speak expensive", "speak budget". allowed-tools: Read, Grep version: 1.0.0 license: MIT author: Jeremy Longshore jeremy@intentsolutions.io

Speak Cost Tuning

Overview

Optimize Speak costs through smart tier selection, efficient lesson design, and usage monitoring.

Prerequisites

• Access to Speak billing dashboard
• Understanding of current usage patterns
• Database for usage tracking (optional)
• Alerting system configured (optional)

Pricing Model

Subscription Tiers

Tier	Monthly Cost	Lessons/mo	Audio Min/mo	Users
Free	$0	50	30	1
Personal	$29	500	300	1
Team	$199	5,000	2,000	10
Business	$499	20,000	10,000	50
Enterprise	Custom	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited

Usage-Based Pricing (Overages)

Resource	Unit	Overage Cost
Lesson Sessions	per session	$0.05
Audio Recognition	per minute	$0.02
Pronunciation Scoring	per evaluation	$0.01
AI Tutor Interactions	per exchange	$0.02

Cost Estimation

interface UsageEstimate {
  lessonsPerMonth: number;
  audioMinutesPerMonth: number;
  tier: string;
  baseCost: number;
  overageCost: number;
  totalCost: number;
  recommendation?: string;
}

function estimateSpeakCost(
  lessonsPerMonth: number,
  audioMinutesPerMonth: number,
  currentTier: 'free' | 'personal' | 'team' | 'business' = 'personal'
): UsageEstimate {
  const tiers = {
    free: { cost: 0, lessons: 50, audio: 30 },
    personal: { cost: 29, lessons: 500, audio: 300 },
    team: { cost: 199, lessons: 5000, audio: 2000 },
    business: { cost: 499, lessons: 20000, audio: 10000 },
  };

  const tier = tiers[currentTier];
  const baseCost = tier.cost;

  // Calculate overages
  const lessonOverage = Math.max(0, lessonsPerMonth - tier.lessons);
  const audioOverage = Math.max(0, audioMinutesPerMonth - tier.audio);

  const overageCost =
    lessonOverage * 0.05 +
    audioOverage * 0.02;

  const totalCost = baseCost + overageCost;

  // Recommend upgrade if overage is high
  let recommendation: string | undefined;
  if (overageCost > baseCost * 0.5) {
    const nextTier = getNextTier(currentTier);
    if (nextTier) {
      const nextTierCost = estimateSpeakCost(
        lessonsPerMonth,
        audioMinutesPerMonth,
        nextTier
      );
      if (nextTierCost.totalCost < totalCost) {
        recommendation = `Consider upgrading to ${nextTier} tier to save ${(totalCost - nextTierCost.totalCost).toFixed(2)}/month`;
      }
    }
  }

  return {
    lessonsPerMonth,
    audioMinutesPerMonth,
    tier: currentTier,
    baseCost,
    overageCost,
    totalCost,
    recommendation,
  };
}

Usage Monitoring

class SpeakUsageMonitor {
  private lessonCount = 0;
  private audioMinutes = 0;
  private pronunciationScores = 0;
  private monthStart: Date;
  private alertThreshold: number;

  constructor(monthlyBudget: number) {
    this.alertThreshold = monthlyBudget * 0.8; // 80% warning
    this.monthStart = new Date();
    this.monthStart.setDate(1);
  }

  trackLesson(duration: number, audioMinutes: number, scores: number): void {
    this.lessonCount++;
    this.audioMinutes += audioMinutes;
    this.pronunciationScores += scores;

    const currentCost = this.estimatedCost();
    if (currentCost > this.alertThreshold) {
      this.sendAlert(`Approaching Speak budget: ${currentCost.toFixed(2)}`);
    }
  }

  estimatedCost(): number {
    // Base tier cost prorated + overages
    const lessonCost = Math.max(0, this.lessonCount - 500) * 0.05;
    const audioCost = Math.max(0, this.audioMinutes - 300) * 0.02;
    const scoreCost = Math.max(0, this.pronunciationScores - 1000) * 0.01;

    return 29 + lessonCost + audioCost + scoreCost; // Assuming personal tier
  }

  getUsageReport(): UsageReport {
    return {
      lessons: this.lessonCount,
      audioMinutes: this.audioMinutes,
      pronunciationScores: this.pronunciationScores,
      estimatedCost: this.estimatedCost(),
      period: {
        start: this.monthStart,
        end: new Date(),
      },
    };
  }

  private sendAlert(message: string): void {
    // Send to Slack, email, PagerDuty, etc.
    console.warn('[SPEAK BUDGET ALERT]', message);
  }
}

Cost Reduction Strategies

Strategy 1: Efficient Lesson Design

// Reduce unnecessary API calls by batching
async function efficientLesson(
  session: LessonSession,
  exchanges: number
): Promise<void> {
  // Pre-fetch all prompts at once
  const prompts = await session.getPromptsBatch(exchanges);

  // Process in sequence but with prepared data
  for (const prompt of prompts) {
    displayPrompt(prompt);
    const response = await getUserResponse();
    // Submit when ready
  }
}

Strategy 2: Client-Side Audio Pre-processing

// Reduce audio minutes billed by trimming silence
async function optimizedAudioSubmit(
  session: LessonSession,
  rawAudio: ArrayBuffer
): Promise<Feedback> {
  // Trim silence locally (free)
  const trimmed = await trimSilence(rawAudio);

  // Only upload meaningful audio (billed)
  const durationReduction = 1 - (trimmed.byteLength / rawAudio.byteLength);
  console.log(`Saved ${(durationReduction * 100).toFixed(0)}% audio cost`);

  return session.submitAudio(trimmed);
}

Strategy 3: Caching Vocabulary Lookups

// Cache vocabulary to reduce API calls
const vocabularyCache = new Map<string, VocabularyEntry>();

async function cachedVocabularyLookup(
  word: string,
  language: string
): Promise<VocabularyEntry> {
  const key = `${language}:${word.toLowerCase()}`;

  if (vocabularyCache.has(key)) {
    return vocabularyCache.get(key)!; // Free
  }

  const entry = await speakClient.vocabulary.lookup(word, language); // Costs
  vocabularyCache.set(key, entry);
  return entry;
}

Strategy 4: Pronunciation Scoring Optimization

// Only score pronunciation on final attempts
async function smartPronunciationScoring(
  session: LessonSession,
  phrase: string,
  audioAttempts: ArrayBuffer[]
): Promise<PronunciationResult> {
  // Quick local validation for early attempts (free)
  for (let i = 0; i < audioAttempts.length - 1; i++) {
    const basic = await localAudioValidation(audioAttempts[i]);
    if (!basic.acceptable) {
      return { needsRetry: true, feedback: basic.feedback };
    }
  }

  // Only call paid API for final attempt
  return session.scorePronunciation(audioAttempts[audioAttempts.length - 1], phrase);
}

Strategy 5: Off-Peak Usage

// Schedule non-urgent operations for off-peak
async function scheduleProgressSync(userId: string): Promise<void> {
  const now = new Date();
  const hour = now.getUTCHours();

  // Off-peak: 2am-6am UTC
  if (hour >= 2 && hour < 6) {
    // Immediate sync
    await speakClient.users.syncProgress(userId);
  } else {
    // Queue for off-peak
    await queue.add('progress-sync', { userId }, {
      delay: getDelayUntilOffPeak(),
    });
  }
}

Budget Alerts Configuration

// Set up billing alerts
interface BudgetAlert {
  threshold: number; // Percentage of budget
  channels: ('email' | 'slack' | 'pagerduty')[];
  action?: 'notify' | 'throttle' | 'pause';
}

const budgetAlerts: BudgetAlert[] = [
  { threshold: 50, channels: ['email'], action: 'notify' },
  { threshold: 75, channels: ['email', 'slack'], action: 'notify' },
  { threshold: 90, channels: ['email', 'slack', 'pagerduty'], action: 'throttle' },
  { threshold: 100, channels: ['email', 'slack', 'pagerduty'], action: 'pause' },
];

async function checkBudget(usage: UsageReport): Promise<void> {
  const budget = 500; // Monthly budget
  const percentUsed = (usage.estimatedCost / budget) * 100;

  for (const alert of budgetAlerts) {
    if (percentUsed >= alert.threshold) {
      await sendBudgetAlert(alert, usage, percentUsed);

      if (alert.action === 'throttle') {
        await enableRateLimiting();
      } else if (alert.action === 'pause') {
        await pauseNonEssentialFeatures();
      }
    }
  }
}

Cost Dashboard Query

-- Track Speak usage costs by user and feature
SELECT
  DATE_TRUNC('day', created_at) as date,
  user_id,
  feature,
  COUNT(*) as operations,
  SUM(audio_seconds) / 60.0 as audio_minutes,
  SUM(
    CASE
      WHEN feature = 'lesson' THEN 0.05
      WHEN feature = 'audio' THEN audio_seconds / 60.0 * 0.02
      WHEN feature = 'pronunciation' THEN 0.01
      ELSE 0
    END
  ) as estimated_cost
FROM speak_usage_logs
WHERE created_at >= DATE_TRUNC('month', CURRENT_DATE)
GROUP BY 1, 2, 3
ORDER BY estimated_cost DESC;

Output

• Optimized tier selection
• Usage monitoring implemented
• Budget alerts configured
• Cost reduction strategies applied
• Efficient lesson design patterns

Error Handling

Issue	Cause	Solution
Unexpected charges	Untracked usage	Implement monitoring
Overage fees	Wrong tier	Upgrade tier
Budget exceeded	No alerts	Set up alerts
Inefficient audio	No preprocessing	Add client-side optimization

Examples

Quick Cost Check

const usage = usageMonitor.getUsageReport();
const estimate = estimateSpeakCost(usage.lessons, usage.audioMinutes, 'personal');

console.log(`Current spend: ${estimate.totalCost.toFixed(2)}`);
console.log(`Base: ${estimate.baseCost} | Overage: ${estimate.overageCost.toFixed(2)}`);

if (estimate.recommendation) {
  console.log(`Recommendation: ${estimate.recommendation}`);
}

Resources

• Speak Pricing
• Speak Billing Dashboard
• Usage API

Next Steps

For architecture patterns, see speak-reference-architecture.