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Know what AI costs. See what you get back.

Understand spending, share budgets and connect AI use to the work it supports.

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Buy tokens, rent GPUs, or own the rack?

Open-weight models are now good enough to make self-hosting a financial question rather than a capability one. I modelled four options, an office rack, colocation, rented GPUs and per-token APIs, to find where each one actually wins. The answer turns on utilisation, and it isn't the one the internet keeps giving.

Turn a $3m AI bill into $1.9m

Most teams overpay for AI twice without noticing: they run everything through the default flagship model, and they buy the tokens on a metered plan they can't see into. An intelligent proxy fixes both. Here is the maths, a calculator you can drag, and where Flowstate fits.

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Understand AI spending and value

See where the budget goes and what the business gets back.

Share one AI budget across your tools

Fund people, teams and projects across connected services.

Give your team more capacity

Reduce the preparation, checking and follow-up around recurring work.

Connect AI use to delivered work

Follow AI activity into projects, code and business results.
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Docs / Flowstate Desktop

Set up Flowstate Desktop for Mac

Flowstate Desktop for Mac sends your AI tool requests through your workspace so usage is tracked in one place. Only AI requests are sent. Everything else goes straight to the internet.

It needs macOS 14 or later. If your IT team manages your Mac, they may set it up for you. See Deploy Flowstate Desktop for Mac with MDM.

Download

Download for macOS

Install and open Flowstate

Open the installer. Flowstate goes into your Applications folder. Open it from there. The app must stay in Applications for the network extension to appear.

Set up

Do the steps in this order.

  1. Sign in. Choose Sign in. Your browser opens platform.flowstate.inc. Sign in to your Flowstate account, or carry on if you’re already signed in. The browser then hands you back to the app, signed in. You don’t type a workspace or a code.
  2. Enable the network extension. Choose Enable network extension. macOS says “System Extension Blocked”. Choose Open System Settings, go to General → Login Items & Extensions → Network Extensions and switch Flowstate on. Enter your password or use Touch ID. When macOS says “Flowstate Would Like to Add Proxy Configurations”, choose Allow.
  3. Trust the certificate. Choose Trust certificate. macOS says “You are making changes to your Certificate Trust Settings”. Approve with Touch ID or your password.

Flowstate starts sending AI requests only once the certificate is trusted. When all three steps show a tick, Flowstate is connected.

Node tools such as Claude Code

Node-based tools such as Claude Code ignore the macOS keychain, so they need the NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS variable to trust Flowstate’s certificate.

  1. Copy the one-line command the app shows.
  2. Paste it into Terminal.
  3. Open a new Terminal window and restart the tool.

Apps that were already open

Quit and reopen any AI apps that were open before Flowstate started, once. They may still be using connections they opened before Flowstate was running.

Claude Desktop

Sign in to Claude Desktop with your claude.ai account as normal. Flowstate covers it from there. You don’t need Claude Desktop’s third-party inference or gateway setting.

Use Flowstate from the menu bar

When setup is done, the setup window closes and Flowstate moves to the menu bar. It has no Dock icon. Select the Flowstate symbol in the menu bar to open the panel. It shows:

  • Connection status. Connected, Paused or Not connected.
  • The on/off switch. Turn it off to pause Flowstate. The panel then reads Paused and your AI traffic goes directly to the internet. Turn it on to resume.
  • Spend limit. Your limit, what you’ve used, what remains and when it resets.
  • Saved by Flowstate. What Flowstate has saved you in the current period.
  • Your account. The account you’re signed in as, and Sign out.
  • Quit Flowstate.

If setup becomes incomplete again, for example after you sign out, the setup window and the Dock icon come back.

Update the certificate when Flowstate covers more services

Flowstate never changes its certificate without asking you. When Flowstate starts covering AI services that your certificate doesn’t include, the menu bar panel says “Flowstate can now cover more AI services” and offers Update certificate. Until you update, requests to those services go directly to the internet as before.

  1. Choose Update certificate.
  2. Approve with Touch ID or your password.
  3. Restart Node tools such as Claude Code so they use the updated certificate.

OpenRouter (openrouter.ai) and the xAI API (api.x.ai) are covered now. If Flowstate was already set up on your Mac before that, choose Update certificate once your app offers it. This needs Flowstate Desktop for Mac 2.0.4 or later. A new install of 2.0.4 or later covers them from the start.

If something’s not right

  • The extension never appears in System Settings. Quit and reopen Flowstate, then choose Enable network extension again. Check the app is in Applications.
  • A Node tool reports a certificate error. Run echo $NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS in a new Terminal window. It should print the path to ca.pem in ~/Library/Application Support/Flowstate. If you’ve just updated the certificate, restart the tool.
  • An app’s requests don’t show up. Quit and reopen the app. If it uses OpenRouter or xAI, check whether the menu bar panel offers Update certificate.

More help: Troubleshooting.

Remove Flowstate

  1. Choose Quit Flowstate in the menu bar panel, then delete the app.
  2. Remove the extension from Network Extensions in System Settings.
  3. Remove the Flowstate certificate in Keychain Access.