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Setup doesn’t cost anything on its own. Connecting an integration, enabling a skill, or creating a routine just configures Dume, it doesn’t run the model. Credits get spent when a session actually runs and Dume generates a response.

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When usage starts

  • Sending a message runs the model on your request and costs credits.
  • A skill running inside a task costs the same way; the skill’s instructions get loaded in and the model follows them.
  • A routine firing on schedule costs credits the same as if you’d sent that message yourself, since it’s still a session running.
There’s no flat per-message fee. Cost scales with how much the model actually reads and writes: a short answer on a light model can be a single credit, a long research task on a premium model can run into the dozens. See the Credit Cost Guide for real numbers by task and model.

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Keeping usage down

  • Use a cheaper or free model (like Ternary Bonsai 27B) for quick questions, and save premium models for work that actually needs the extra reasoning; see Choosing a model.
  • Be specific in your prompt. A vague request often costs more in back-and-forth clarification than a precise one would have upfront.
  • Scope routines to what you actually need summarized or done, not everything a tool could return.
  • For a repeated task, a well-scoped custom skill can make each run shorter and more predictable than starting from scratch every time; see Building a custom skill.