we can only estimate token <> cost in our cloud agent, but we also OSS'd the skills and in those cases the cost is ~$0 (part of one's LLM subscription): https://github.com/usetrmnl/trmnl-agent-skills
the agent also has a model switcher, and the estimate you quoted is based on Haiku when we launched.
i founded TRMNL and didn't try AI myself until ~2 months ago. i'd rather shut down down and open source everything (per our Unbrickable Pledge) than become "just another AI company."
the AI Agent exists to empower less technical folks to turn their vision into reality, and we're proud of what's possible with it. meanwhile our top community developers continue to hand craft beautiful, useful plugins for everyone to install, LLM free.
thanks for reading, updating the post now to explain we use the Superpowers skill and spend 90% of our effort on specs / tests. measure thrice, cut once.
what do you think it should be called? for ~$15 optional one time bucks people get 24/7 access to the entire engineering team, me, prioritized feature dev, and can earn monthly payouts from our Creator Fund. we don’t charge a subscription, obviously i’m partial but this model has serves us well. and most of the developer edition fee goes right back to the community via bounties, perks, etc.
you can import ~700 plugins from core to Terminus (Hanami build) or the Laravel build in 1 click. maybe you came on board before that was a reality. we and the community have been rapidly developing multiple self hosted servers with all kinds of features and in different frameworks for comfort. in no marketing materials have we ever claimed that OSS clients were the same as the main web app. in fact that’s why we offer a BYOD license for the web app only. we’ve invested hundreds of thousands into open source so that people can get the TRMNL experience without paying us a penny.
thanks for the support and i hear you. a few folks pointed their Boox at TRMNL[1], and we’re finally in the smart home arena now with free 5 min refresh rate for Home Assistant. aiming for JIT refresh by summer.
OP's Timeframe looks rad, but yes on the pricy side. check out trmnl .com for smaller / less expensive options and self hosted options. (disclaimer: i'm on the team)
oh interesting. i suppose we (or you) could be a plugin that parses epub/* formats and thus, a button click on device would fetch the next screen. double-click can already be set to go in reverse. but the full feedback loop takes a few seconds, not instant like an e-reader.