📖What it means

What it cost: one request to an outside provider that Carolverse pays for — a model answering a prompt, an image or a video being generated, a speech clip being spoken. A call is the unit of MONEY, and it is the only one of the three that spends. Tokens are the commonest way a call is priced, NOT the definition: media is billed per asset, so 'consumes tokens' would leave every picture Carol generates outside the vocabulary. Every call carries a work ticket saying what it was for, and passes the one money gate at its service track.

📖Easily confused with

[{"term": "Activity", "distinction": "An activity is the log of something done and may have cost nothing; a call ALWAYS costs money."}, {"term": "Token", "distinction": "How most calls are PRICED, not what a call is. Media calls are priced per asset, so counting tokens misses them entirely."}, {"term": "Task", "distinction": "What the money was spent toward. The task holds the budget; the call spends it."}]

📖Nuance

The three are separate ledgers and must not be read as versions of each other: a task's actuals are made of activities; some activities carry calls; calls carry the money. Counting one to answer for another is what made every earlier count meaningless.

📖Also called

- paid call
- provider call
- model call

📖Filed under

Category: governance.

Service: Governance.