Planning your IU usage

What the usage planner is for

Intelligence Units (IUs) are the currency IQ spends when it does AI work for you: running a decision, pulling a deep dive on a vendor, holding a chat. Once you have been using IQ for a few weeks, Verinode can read your ledger and tell you exactly how you use it. But on day one there is no ledger yet, nothing to measure. The usage planner is the bridge for that gap: you tell it, in plain language, how often you expect to lean on IQ, and it answers the two questions an operator actually cares about, in outcomes, never in raw compute counts:

1. Does my membership cover how I'll use IQ?, the coverage bar.
2. How long will what I have last at that pace?, the runway line.

Nothing you enter here is saved or billed. It is a planning tool, not a setting. Move between the three pace options as many times as you like to see how the numbers shift.

Where to find it

The usage planner lives inside the Intelligence Units overlay, the panel that opens when you click your IU balance chip, the small pill in IQ's top bar showing your current balance (for example, "480 IU"). Click it and a panel titled Intelligence Units opens, with the eyebrow Membership above the title.

The planner only appears in one specific condition: you have spent nothing in the last 30 days. That covers a brand-new membership before its first AI run, and it also covers a returning operator who has gone quiet for a month. The moment you have any recorded spend in that trailing window, the panel replaces the planner with your actual last-30-days summary instead (see below), because at that point Verinode has real data to show you instead of an estimate.

For the fuller billing picture, ie. your total balance across included allotment and prepaid bundles, ways to add capacity, and auto-top-up, open Settings > Membership > Manage membership, which takes you to the account billing page at /account/billing. That page is covered in Account & Billing: Intelligence Units; this article is specifically about the planner inside the balance chip's overlay.

The three pace buttons

At the top of the planner sits the question "How much will you lean on IQ?", followed by three buttons laid out side by side:

| Button | Subtext | What it represents | |---|---|---| | Now and then | A few decisions a week | Light, occasional use | | Most weeks | Part of your routine | Regular, weekly use, this is the default when the panel opens | | All in | Across your whole operation | Heavy use, close to running everything you do through IQ |

Click a button to select it, its border turns copper and it takes a light copper tint. Only one pace is selected at a time, and every number below the buttons updates instantly to match your selection.

These three options are calibrated so that "Now and then" and "Most weeks" both sit comfortably inside an Executive membership's included monthly allotment, and "All in" is the one that typically tips over it. That is deliberate: going over is meant to read as a normal, small top-up, not a wall you hit.

Reading the result: "that is about N decisions a month"

Directly under the pace buttons, a line reads:

That is about [N] decisions a month.

This is the planner translating your selected pace into the same "decision" unit used everywhere else in Verinode's billing language: a decision is the standard unit of AI work, roughly what it costs IQ to run one full decision analysis for you (30 IU). The planner does the arithmetic for you: it takes your selected weekly pace, spreads it across an average month (about 4.3 weeks), and converts the result into a decisions-per-month figure. You never see raw IU math here, only the outcome.

The coverage bar: does your membership cover it

Below the decisions-per-month line, if your membership has a known monthly allotment, a slim horizontal bar appears. It fills from left to right in proportion to how much of your allotment your selected pace would use:

• Green fill (fully inside your allotment): the bar fills only as far as your expected use, the rest stays empty track.
• Copper fill, with a lighter copper overflow segment: this appears once your selected pace would use more IU than your monthly allotment includes. The solid copper portion fills the whole bar (you are using all of it), and a translucent copper segment tacked on the end represents how far over you would run, visually capped so an extreme pace never draws an absurdly long bar.

Underneath the bar, one of three plain-language lines appears, colored to match the bar:

• Covered: "Your membership includes about [X] decisions a month, so you are covered."
• Over, and you can add more (paid memberships, Executive, Premier, or Reserve): "Your membership includes about [X] a month. In a busy month you would add about [Y] more. A quick top-up covers it."
• Over, and you're on the free Contributor allotment: "Your free allotment covers about [X] a month. At this pace you would go about [Y] beyond it. Members can add more."

The "quick top-up" and "members can add more" language points at the same place: Buying Intelligence Units: bundles vs recurring covers one-time bundles, a recurring monthly subscription, and opt-in auto-top-up. Contributors specifically cannot buy additional IU on their own, the message nudges toward becoming a paid member instead of a purchase button, which is why the copy differs by tier.

If your membership has no monthly allotment on file at all, the coverage bar is skipped entirely, there is nothing to measure your pace against.

The runway line: how long your current balance lasts

Below the coverage bar (or below the decisions-a-month line, if the bar did not render), a final line appears whenever you currently hold a positive IU balance:

At this pace, your current balance lasts [runway].

This takes the balance you hold right now, not your monthly allotment, and projects it forward at your selected pace. The projection reads as:

• "about N days" when the balance would run out inside a week.
• "about N weeks" for anything longer.
• "plenty this month" when your balance would comfortably outlast the coming month at that pace (the projection is capped rather than showing an oddly precise "lasts 400 days").

If your current balance is zero, this line does not appear, there is nothing to project a runway from.

When you already have usage: what replaces the planner

The planner is specifically a no-history tool. As soon as the ledger shows any spend inside the trailing 30 days, the same space in the Intelligence Units overlay switches to a "Last 30 days" summary instead:

You've spent [total] IU in the last 30 days. Breakdown:

followed by a grid of category totals (agent runs, research reports, analysis, ingestion, and so on), each with its own IU total, largest first. At that point Verinode is reading your actual mix rather than an estimate you supplied, so the planner's pace buttons step aside for good, until, in effect, your account resets to a fresh 30-day window with zero spend, which would only happen after a long stretch of inactivity.

Reading the rest of the Intelligence Units overlay

The planner sits inside a larger panel, worth knowing in full:

• Your balance, at the top: your current IU total in large type, colored copper normally, and switched to the maintain-signal amber once your balance drops under about 15% of your monthly allotment. Beneath it, when Verinode has enough data, a value-translation line ("About [X] decisions or [Y] conversations left") and a runway line, plus "of [allotment] this period ([Z]% remaining)". A bold warning line, "You're approaching your usage limit. Top up below or wait for your next allotment," appears once you cross that same 15% threshold.
• The planner or the 30-day summary, described above.
• Activity, a table of your last 50 ledger entries: When (a relative or short date), Reason (a humanized label such as "Monthly allotment," "Agent run," "IU pack purchase," or "Earned · contribution"), Δ IU (the signed change, green for credits, red for spend), and Balance (your running balance after that entry). If you have no ledger entries at all yet, the table reads "No activity yet."
• Footer: a reminder that "IU never expire while your membership stays active," and an Add capacity button that opens the IU top-up flow directly.

Empty states, in full

• No usage yet, membership has a known allotment: planner shown, coverage bar shown, runway line shown if your balance is positive.
• No usage yet, no monthly allotment on file: planner shown, but no coverage bar (nothing to measure it against).
• No usage yet, zero current balance: planner shown with the decisions-a-month line and coverage bar, but no runway line (nothing to project).
• Any usage in the last 30 days: planner is replaced by the "Last 30 days" summary; the planner will not reappear until a full 30-day window passes with zero spend.
• No ledger entries at all: the Activity table reads "No activity yet."

Related reading

• Account & Billing: Intelligence Units
• Reading your IU balance
• Buying Intelligence Units: bundles vs recurring
• Understanding your margin
• The decision workspace
• Acting on decisions