# Overview

R3CKON is a ledger for the environmental footprint of AI usage.

> Free accounts are open today. Paid tiers, which add certificate retirements, are not yet on sale.

It does three things, every month, for every account:

1. **Meters** your AI usage from metadata alone (models, token counts, regions).
2. **Estimates** the usage-phase water, carbon, and energy cost of that usage
   with a public, versioned methodology, always shown with its uncertainty range.
3. **Retires** third-party-issued environmental certificates against the conservative end
   of that estimate, and issues a certificate documenting exactly what was
   funded and what you may say about it.

The product is deliberately not a neutrality badge. The footprint is an
estimate with a wide, honestly stated range; the retirements are exact,
documented instruments. The ledger keeps the two sides related but never
equated, and every claim the platform supports is an activity claim: what was
estimated, what was funded, identified by project and vintage.

## Who it is for

- **Individuals** who use AI heavily and want a real record rather than a
  feeling (Personal tier, self-report or CSV upload).
- **Teams and AI-native products** with API usage and, increasingly,
  customers or boards asking about AI's environmental cost (Team and
  Business tiers, SDK capture or a sync script).
- **Enterprises** with reporting obligations, negotiated volume, and audit
  support needs.

## The loop, in one pass

- Usage arrives from your own code, from a sync script you run, from a
  scoped Google connection, from a CSV upload, or from self-report in the
  console. Every path carries token metadata only; content-shaped payloads
  are rejected at the API boundary. We never accept a credential that can
  change anything in your provider account, which is why Anthropic and
  OpenAI are served by a script you run rather than a key you hand over.
- The methodology converts usage into water (gallons), carbon (kg CO2e),
  and energy (kWh) estimates. Every figure carries a 90 percent plausible
  range, and every estimate stores the exact coefficient values used, so
  historical numbers stay reproducible forever.
- At each monthly close, the obligation accrues at the 90th percentile of
  the estimate range (P90) and whole registry units are retired against it:
  Water Restoration Certificates, carbon credits, and Renewable
  Energy Certificates. Buffer inventory is drawn first; supplier orders
  cover any shortfall.
- A four-section certificate documents confirmed retirements, the estimate
  that sized them, required disclosures, and the exact statements the
  record supports.

## Glossary

- **Billable tokens**: fresh input + output + 10 percent of cached input.
  Reasoning tokens are a subset of output, so they are never counted twice.
  Tier caps count billable tokens, so cache-heavy workloads are not
  overcharged. This is a fixed billing rule, deliberately separate from the
  estimation methodology.
- **P50 / P90 / the range**: the methodology outputs a probability
  distribution, not a number. P50 is the median (central estimate). P90 is
  the retirement accrual basis: nine tenths of the probability sits below
  it. The whisker on every chart spans P05 to P95, the 90 percent plausible
  range.
- **Accrual basis**: the quantity a retirement accrues against. Where your
  usage is metered this is simply P90, as above. Where part of your usage
  is modeled or projected rather than recorded, the two come apart on
  purpose: the range you are shown widens to reflect that you told us you
  were unsure, but the accrual basis stays at P90 of the METHODOLOGY's
  uncertainty taken at the central estimate of your usage. The reason is
  that we choose how much a vague answer widens the range, and a customer
  who admits uncertainty should not owe more than one who does not on the
  same evidence.
- **Retirement**: permanently taking a registry instrument out of
  circulation, on your behalf. Retirements are whole units only; fractional
  obligations carry forward.
- **Confirmed vs pending**: a funded supplier order awaiting registry
  confirmation is pending. Certificates report confirmed retirements only;
  pending orders never support any public statement.
- **Buffer**: company-owned retired inventory drawn on before new supplier
  orders. Customers are never billed for buffer fills.
- **Retirement basket**: each paid tier retires a fixed monthly basket
  sized above its full allowance's accrual basis. The prior model's
  phrasing, retained for context: a commitment that at least half of
  subscription revenue to date buys certificates. Mechanics and the
  cumulative cash basis: [Billing](/docs/billing).
- **Usage-phase footprint**: the metric covers inference only. Model
  training, hardware manufacturing beyond an amortized embodied-carbon
  adder, network transport, and end-user devices are out of scope and
  disclosed as such.

## What this is not

- **Not a neutrality claim.** An estimate this uncertain cannot honestly be
  declared settled, so the platform never says it is, and the Terms license
  customers to say only what the record supports.
- **Not a measurement.** Providers do not disclose per-token energy or
  water. Figures are modeled estimates with stated ranges, per the
  [methodology](/methodology).
- **Not always local.** Projects live where they live. Restoring
  one watershed does not un-consume water in another, and certificates
  state project geography rather than implying it away.

## Where to go next

- [Quickstart](/docs/quickstart): a working ledger in ten minutes.
- [Connecting usage](/docs/connecting-usage): every way in, and why we refuse admin keys.
- [Metering API](/docs/metering-api): the developer reference.
- [Methodology](/methodology): every constant, formula, and source.