Credit consumption contract

Generation and transcription responses report the charge made by the account service and the balance remaining for the authorized account.

Public response fields

Successful feature responses can include:

{
  "credits_needed": 12.8,
  "remaining_credits": 487.2
}

credits_needed is the charge for that execution. remaining_credits is the account balance after the operation. POM AI stores the returned balance locally as a display cache so later admin screens can show the most recent known value; the account service remains authoritative.

Feature-specific output accompanies those fields, for example generated content, an image payload, or transcription text. An integration must validate the required feature output as well as the credit fields before reporting full success.

Failure and retry

Normalized error payloads may include credit fields when the account service supplies them. This can explain an insufficient-credit rejection or a failure that occurred after usage was determined. Do not assume that a network timeout means no charge occurred. Query the current balance or inspect the feature’s resulting WordPress state before retrying.

Batch workflows can consume credits item by item and can stop after partial completion. Report per-item results and the final returned balance rather than multiplying the original estimate.

Never log or display the license key alongside credit data.

Related guides: credit estimate contract, review unexpected credit use, and credits not visible.