Tool budgets defined

Severity: Recommended

Beyond cloud, SaaS tools add up. Each paid tool should have an expected cost and owner.

Check automatically:

# Look for tool/vendor documentation
find . -maxdepth 4 -type f \( -name "*tool*" -o -name "*vendor*" -o -name "*stack*" -o -name "*cost*" \) -name "*.md" 2>/dev/null | grep -v node_modules

# Look for cost documentation
grep -riE "cost|budget|subscription|pricing" docs/ --include="*.md" 2>/dev/null

# Identify SaaS tools from codebase
grep -riE "sentry|datadog|intercom|hubspot|zendesk|slack|notion|figma|linear|github|gitlab|vercel|netlify|heroku|planetscale|supabase" package.json .env.example src/ --include="*.json" --include="*.env*" --include="*.ts" --include="*.js" 2>/dev/null | head -30

Ask user:

• "Do you have a list of all paid tech tools?" (SaaS, APIs, services)
• "Does each have a defined budget or expected monthly cost?"
• "Where is this tracked?" (spreadsheet, finance system, Notion)
• "Who owns each tool budget?" (or category owner)

Common tool categories to cover:

Category	Examples
Infrastructure	Vercel, Netlify, Heroku, Railway
Database	PlanetScale, Supabase, MongoDB Atlas
Monitoring	Datadog, Sentry, LogRocket
Communication	Slack, Discord
Development	GitHub, GitLab, Linear
Design	Figma, Framer
Analytics	Mixpanel, Amplitude, PostHog
Support	Intercom, Zendesk
Email	SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun

Pass criteria:

• Inventory of paid tools exists
• Each tool has expected monthly/annual cost documented
• Budget owner identified (per tool or per category)
• Regular review of tool costs

Fail criteria:

• No tool inventory ("we have subscriptions scattered across credit cards")
• Tools listed but no budgets/expected costs
• Only track cloud, ignore SaaS tools
• Nobody owns tool cost management

Evidence to capture:

• Location of tool inventory
• Number of tools tracked vs. estimated total
• Whether costs are documented
• Owner for tool budget management

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