# Croutons

> Croutons is an AI inference management layer. It shows where a company’s AI spends money, where it makes mistakes, and what to route, check, reuse or fix first.

Croutons is a product of Neural Command, LLC. Canonical origin: https://croutons.ai

AI inference management is the process of measuring, routing, governing, and optimizing the model calls used by AI applications, agents, and automated workflows.

## Book or buy (prices are live in /api/sessions)

- [AI Layer Diagnosis Call](https://croutons.ai/book/ai-layer-diagnosis): Free, 30 min, USD. Find where your AI spends money and where it breaks.
- [AI Visibility Diagnosis Call](https://croutons.ai/book/ai-visibility-diagnosis): Free, 30 min, USD. Find out why ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini do not mention you.
- [Evidence Brief Review Call](https://croutons.ai/book/evidence-brief-review): Free, 30 min, USD. Turn your claims into proof that people and AI can cite.
- [AI Rollout Risk Review Call](https://croutons.ai/book/ai-rollout-risk-review): Free, 30 min, USD. Check an AI rollout for breakpoints before it goes live.
- Paid engagements: Diagnosis only (fixed quote after the free call); Managed layer (monthly quote based on volume); Integrated infrastructure (custom statement of work). Details: https://croutons.ai/book#engagements
- Business hours: Mon–Thu 09:00–17:00, Fri 09:00–12:00, America/Los_Angeles. Minimum notice 12 h.

## How an agent can book

1. GET https://croutons.ai/api/sessions — sessions, prices, rules
2. GET https://croutons.ai/api/availability?session={slug}&from=YYYY-MM-DD&to=YYYY-MM-DD — open ISO 8601 UTC start times
3. POST https://croutons.ai/api/book with JSON {session, start, name, email, company?, notes?, timeZone?} — held 60 min, confirmed by the attendee's email link
Or connect the MCP server: https://croutons.ai/mcp (streamable HTTP, JSON-RPC 2.0, no key). OpenAPI: https://croutons.ai/openapi.json

## Pages

- [Croutons — See What Your AI Costs, Fix What It Breaks](https://croutons.ai/): Croutons shows where your company’s AI spends money, where it makes mistakes and what to fix first. Start with a free 30-minute diagnosis call, booked on this site.
- [AI Inference Use Cases: Cost, Routing, Agents & Rollout Risk](https://croutons.ai/use-cases): Twelve Croutons use cases in six areas: AI cost, model routing, agent reliability, governance, rollout risk and unit economics. Each lists signs, inputs and deliverables.
- [Inference Cost Diagnosis: Find Where Your AI Spend Goes](https://croutons.ai/use-cases/inference-cost-optimization): Your AI bill keeps growing. We show you which models, agents and retries are driving it, and what to change first. Croutons evaluates where inference spend concentrates across models, agents, retries and context size, and recommends routing and workload changes.
- [Cost, Latency & Quality Optimization for AI Workloads](https://croutons.ai/use-cases/cost-latency-quality-optimization): Cheaper, faster and better pull against each other. We help you decide the trade-off per job instead of guessing. Croutons evaluates trade-offs between cost, latency and quality, including quality-path optimization, so teams stop optimizing one metric in isolation.
- [Model Routing Strategy: Match Every AI Task to the Right Model](https://croutons.ai/use-cases/model-routing): Using your most expensive model for everything is like sending every letter by courier. We help you write the rules for which model does which job. Croutons evaluates model routing and provider/fallback strategy so task class, risk and measured quality drive assignment, not ad hoc overrides.
- [Control Agent Fan-Out and Inference Waste](https://croutons.ai/use-cases/agent-fan-out-control): One question to an AI agent can trigger dozens of hidden calls. We map that chain and show where to cut it. Croutons evaluates how planners, agents, retries, retrieval and tool calls amplify inference consumption across a completed task.
- [Agent Reliability Analysis: Find Why AI Agents Fail](https://croutons.ai/use-cases/agent-reliability): Your AI agent gives different answers, retries too much or fails without telling anyone. We find out why and what to fix first. Croutons evaluates unreliable agent behavior across context, routing, tools and failure modes.
- [AI Rollout Risk: Lessons from the Pizza Hut Dragontail Case](https://croutons.ai/use-cases/ai-implementation-risk): AI can improve one step and break everything around it. We check the whole workflow before you launch. Croutons diagnoses workflow breakpoints and rollout risk before AI automation reaches production.
- [AI Visibility & GEO: Get Recommended by ChatGPT and Google](https://croutons.ai/ai-visibility): Make your business readable to search engines and AI assistants. Croutons maps crawl paths, schema, feeds and evidence so AI can find, trust and cite you.
- [Evidence Briefs: Turn Claims into Proof AI Can Cite](https://croutons.ai/evidence-briefs): An Evidence Brief connects a claim to the source that proves it. Croutons builds briefs your team, customers and AI systems can retrieve and cite.
- [Croutons Docs: Crouton Units, Diagnosis Flow & Glossary](https://croutons.ai/docs): How Croutons works: Crouton Units, the first diagnosis, inputs and outputs, implementation paths, machine-readable files and a glossary of every term we use.
- [Pricing & Booking: Free 30-Minute AI Diagnosis Calls](https://croutons.ai/book): Four free 30-minute calls: AI layer, AI visibility, evidence and rollout risk. See open times and book on this page. Paid work is quoted in writing first.
- [AI Layer Diagnosis Call: Book a Free 30-Min Call](https://croutons.ai/book/ai-layer-diagnosis): Find where your AI spends money and where it breaks. Free 30-minute video call. Pick a day and time in your time zone and book in under a minute.
- [AI Visibility Diagnosis Call: Book a Free 30-Min Call](https://croutons.ai/book/ai-visibility-diagnosis): Find out why ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini do not mention you. Free 30-minute video call. Pick a day and time in your time zone and book in under a minute.
- [Evidence Brief Review Call: Book a Free 30-Min Call](https://croutons.ai/book/evidence-brief-review): Turn your claims into proof that people and AI can cite. Free 30-minute video call. Pick a day and time in your time zone and book in under a minute.
- [AI Rollout Risk Review Call: Book a Free 30-Min Call](https://croutons.ai/book/ai-rollout-risk-review): Check an AI rollout for breakpoints before it goes live. Free 30-minute video call. Pick a day and time in your time zone and book in under a minute.
- [Croutons FAQ: Pricing, Booking, AI Costs & AI Visibility](https://croutons.ai/faq): Every Croutons question in one list: pricing, booking, AI cost, model routing, agents, AI visibility, evidence briefs and booking by AI assistant.
- [For AI Agents: Book Croutons via WebMCP, MCP or API](https://croutons.ai/agents): AI assistants can read Croutons prices and open times and book calls directly through WebMCP, a public MCP endpoint at croutons.ai/mcp, or a JSON API.
- [Contact Croutons](https://croutons.ai/contact): Write to the Croutons team. We reply within one business day. For a guaranteed time, book a free 30-minute call.
- [Privacy Policy](https://croutons.ai/privacy): How Croutons collects, uses and protects information from the website, bookings and diagnosis work.
- [Terms of Use](https://croutons.ai/terms): Terms for using croutons.ai, booking calls and diagnosis engagements.

## Use cases

- [Inference cost diagnosis](https://croutons.ai/use-cases/inference-cost-optimization) [supported]: Croutons evaluates where inference spend concentrates across models, agents, retries and context size, and recommends routing and workload changes.
- [Cost–latency–quality optimization](https://croutons.ai/use-cases/cost-latency-quality-optimization) [supported]: Croutons evaluates trade-offs between cost, latency and quality, including quality-path optimization, so teams stop optimizing one metric in isolation.
- [Prompt and context efficiency](https://croutons.ai/use-cases#prompt-context-efficiency) [supported]: Croutons evaluates prompt and context-window waste that inflates tokens without improving task outcomes.
- [Caching-opportunity analysis](https://croutons.ai/use-cases#caching-opportunity-analysis) [supported]: Croutons evaluates which inference steps are candidates for cache, reuse or memoization versus live model calls.
- [Batch-workload classification](https://croutons.ai/use-cases#batch-workload-classification) [supported]: Croutons evaluates which workloads belong in batch or async paths versus synchronous high-priority inference.
- [Model routing strategy](https://croutons.ai/use-cases/model-routing) [supported]: Croutons evaluates model routing and provider/fallback strategy so task class, risk and measured quality drive assignment, not ad hoc overrides.
- [Agent fan-out control](https://croutons.ai/use-cases/agent-fan-out-control) [supported]: Croutons evaluates how planners, agents, retries, retrieval and tool calls amplify inference consumption across a completed task.
- [Agent reliability analysis](https://croutons.ai/use-cases/agent-reliability) [supported]: Croutons evaluates unreliable agent behavior across context, routing, tools and failure modes.
- [Evaluation-system design](https://croutons.ai/use-cases#evaluation-system-design) [supported]: Croutons evaluates whether evaluation coverage matches the risks of the workflows you run.
- [Runtime governance review](https://croutons.ai/use-cases#runtime-governance) [supported]: Croutons evaluates runtime governance, including human approval and escalation controls for high-stakes inference paths.
- [AI implementation and rollout readiness](https://croutons.ai/use-cases/ai-implementation-risk) [live]: Croutons diagnoses workflow breakpoints and rollout risk before AI automation reaches production.
- [AI unit-economics validation](https://croutons.ai/use-cases#ai-unit-economics) [supported]: Croutons evaluates whether AI unit economics support continued spend given measured cost, quality and business outcomes.

## Related

- [Agent C app](https://agentc.croutons.ai/): Croutons' app that checks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini recommend a business.

## Contact

- hi@croutons.ai · bookings: hi@croutons.ai · privacy: hi@croutons.ai · legal: hi@croutons.ai