Bring back usage tracking in VS Code via relative percentages for spend limits (e.g., 120%)

[tstreibl]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Product Feedback

💬 Feature/Topic Area

VS Code

Body

With the recent transition to usage-based billing, the exact consumption tracker is missing from the VS Code UI once the base limit is exceeded and the additional "Spend Limit" (overage) kicks in. Currently, it only shows that the extension is active, forcing developers to open a browser tab just to check how many AI credits/dollars are left.

While I understand there might be privacy or technical limitations regarding the API sending raw financial data (like dollar amounts) directly into the IDE, a great middle-ground solution would be using relative percentages.

Proposed Solution:
If a user triggers their additional budget, the VS Code status bar or the Copilot dropdown menu should simply continue counting past 100%.

• For example: If I use up my base plan and start consuming my added budget, the UI could display "120% used" (meaning 100% base + 20% of the newly unlocked capacity).

This gives developers immediate visual feedback on their burn rate without forcing them to constantly disrupt their workflow to check the GitHub billing website.

Alternative Solutions considered:

• Displaying absolute request/token counts directly in the UI widget.

[github-actions[bot]]

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