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HoneyReconciliation

Reconciliation

Honey metering is centralized and server-side. Your balance is decremented atomically in a server-side ledger that the desktop client cannot tamper with, so what you are charged always matches the work that actually ran. This page explains the reserve, settle, and refund flow and how to read your usage history.

Reserve, settle, refund

Because the precise cost of a run is not known until it finishes, SwarmADE meters every run in two phases:

  1. Reserve — when a run starts, the service estimates its cost and reserves that amount of Honey up front. The reservation is held against your balance so concurrent runs cannot overspend it.
  2. Settle — when the work completes, the run settles to its actual cost. The ledger records the real amount the run consumed.
  3. Refund — if the actual cost is less than the reserved estimate, the difference is refunded back to your balance automatically.

This is why a run may briefly show a higher pending amount than it ultimately costs: the estimate is reserved first, then trued up. The reservation also means you never accidentally start a run you cannot pay for — if the estimate exceeds your balance, the run is held rather than failing partway through.

The reserved amount is an upper-bound estimate, not the final charge. When a run settles for less than it reserved — which is common — the unused Honey returns to your balance. You are only ever billed for the actual cost recorded in the ledger.

The ledger is the source of truth

Every reservation, settlement, and refund is written to the server-side ledger as a discrete, atomic entry. Because decrements happen on the server and not in the client, the ledger is the authoritative record of your balance. The live counter in the desktop app reflects the ledger; it does not compute your balance independently.

Reading your usage history

Open the Honey ledger from the live counter in the Hive header to see your full transaction history. Each entry shows:

  • Allowance renewals — the monthly refill at the start of each cycle.
  • Top-ups — extra Honey you purchased, including any bonus.
  • Per-run consumption — the settled cost of each Queen pass, Drone review, or SwarmMemory cloud operation.
  • Refunds — the difference returned when a run settled below its reservation.

Reviewing the ledger makes it easy to see which Hives or task types spend the most and to confirm that reservations were trued up correctly.

Where to go next

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