Capacity, Cost and Energy Tools · Tools: the course

All courses / Tools / Module 5 / Chapter 17

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

Draft a team consumption envelope with soft and hard thresholds, per-task ceilings and gateway behaviour at the cap.
Review a capacity record for its back-test, uplift, guardrails and approving person.
Design a cost-and-latency budget for an AI service with a fallback ladder and a stop outside the agent.
State an energy claim with its boundary, method and limitations, or record that the claim is not yet available.

Key concepts

Allocation map: An artefact of AI Governance, Chapter 16A, that maps API keys, agent identities and reserved capacity to use cases and cost centres. The gateway and the showback report read the same map, and the gateway refuses any unmapped identity.
Team consumption envelope: A per-team envelope for agentic work tools in Mode 3, where consumption follows the task and not the person. At the hard cap, premium models are disabled for the rest of the period while self-hosted models stay available.
Capacity record: A record, family CAP, that turns a forecast into a proposal: back-test, uplift for under-coverage, the guardrails capacity may not be cut below, and the approving person. A forecast is a distribution, not a value.
Cost-and-latency budget: An artefact of AI Operations, also family CAP, holding capacity, unit cost, objectives, a fallback ladder and a stop for an AI service, with per-run, daily and monthly cost limits where the service is an agent.
Software Carbon Intensity calculation: A method computing emissions per functional unit: energy times carbon intensity, plus allocated embodied emissions. The specification of the Green Software Foundation is adopted as ISO/IEC 21031:2024; the record states boundary, method and limitations.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Interactive exercise 1 · Match

Records that steer cost, capacity and energy

Match each artefact or method of Chapter 17 with its purpose.

Interactive exercise 2 · Scenario

A proposal to cut standby capacity

Choose what the service owner should decide, following the rules of the capacity record in AI Operations.

Teaching plan

15 min	Present Figure 17.1, the cost steering loop. Read the Hansa Mutual allocation map and the envelope of EUR 5,600 a month for 14 seats with its thresholds and per-task ceiling.
15 min	Teach capacity: the record CAP-HM-2028-014 and what it must never contain, the GPU capacity plan with its utilisation-floor alert, and the routing policy that evaluates data classification first.
10 min	Teach token economics and energy: the cost-and-latency budget CAP-NR-AI-001 and the Nordvik Region Software Carbon Intensity record, read for what it refuses to claim.
25 min	Exercise: participants write an envelope and a cost-and-latency budget for one AI service or team.
10 min	Debrief: where does each stop sit, and which energy claims had no metered boundary.

Discussion

The chapter concludes that the unit of cost of an agent is the run, so a daily cap alone is not a control. What can go wrong within one run that a daily cap would not catch?
The capacity record must never take its cost estimate from the agent instead of the provider usage export. Why does the source of the figure matter?
The right entry when no metered energy figure exists is that the claim is not yet available, with the party and the date. How would your sustainability reporting change under that rule?

Written exercise

Exercise · 25 minutes

An envelope and a budget for one AI service

Choose one team that uses agentic work tools or one AI service in your organisation, or take the citizen-service assistant of Nordvik Region. First write a team consumption envelope: cost centre, seats, monthly envelope, soft and hard thresholds, a per-task ceiling, a retry limit and what the gateway does at the hard cap. Then write a cost-and-latency budget for the service: capacity, unit cost per outcome as percentiles and not a mean, the latency objective, per-run, daily and monthly limits, the fallback ladder down to a staffed manual rung, the named holder of the stop outside the agent, and the review date. State the energy claim only if it is metered; otherwise record who will meter it and by when.

Deliverable: A consumption envelope and a cost-and-latency budget with fallback ladder, stop holder, review date and an honest energy line.

Your work

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

What does the cost-aware model routing policy of AI Platform and Security evaluate first?
Show the answer
B. Data classification, so that a confidential or personal request never leaves EU-hosted capacity
The policy in Appendix A evaluates data classification first, then task type and the later rules, so that cost never overrides the hosting constraint for confidential or personal requests.
What does the utilisation-floor alert of 0.45 in the GPU capacity plan do?
Show the answer
D. It turns accelerator hoarding into a visible finding
The plan reserves for the baseline and bursts only when latency is at risk; its utilisation-floor alert turns accelerator hoarding into a visible finding.
Which of these may a capacity record of AI Operations never contain?
Show the answer
A. A forecast without a back-test
The artefact must never contain a forecast without a back-test, a reduction of the standby floor before a failover re-test, or a cost estimate taken from the agent. The chapter concludes that such a record is a hope.