How do you reduce development cost without losing track of environment state?

Say it in 30 seconds

Say it like this (20-30 seconds)

MiniTickets keeps environment switches in committed Pulumi config and deploys them through CD, so cost changes remain reviewable. Entry, compute and data layers can be removed in dependency order. The release tag remains in SSM for the next startup. A twenty-dollar monthly budget sends warnings; it does not cap spend. I distinguish removable development data from production state and inspect retained storage, queues and artifacts before calling an environment free.

The deeper answer

Entry requires compute and data, and compute requires data. Turning off entry removes the public entry resources and web service. Turning off compute removes services, Lambdas and their log groups. Turning off data deletes the development Postgres and Valkey resources; this is not a safe production shutdown recipe.

Always-on components include queues, tables, the assets bucket, image repositories and identity resources. Many have low or no idle compute cost, but storage and requests can still cost money. Waiting queue messages also have finite retention; turning consumers off is not indefinite storage.

The budget excludes credits and notifies at 25, 50 and 100 percent of actual spend and 100 percent forecast. Those are configuration values, not a current price estimate or a guaranteed real-time limit. For a cost spike I would compare Cost Explorer services and usage changes, then identify whether idle resources, increased traffic, retained artifacts or logging explain the difference.

Counter-questions

Would you automatically delete resources at the budget limit?

That trades a bill for an outage or data loss. This project deliberately warns a person; production needs an explicit approved cost-response policy.

Can you put the deployed image tag in the stack config?

The release tag belongs to CD-managed SSM. Committed config describes the environment shape so local infrastructure work cannot silently select another app version.

What is the dangerous switch?

dataEnabled removes the development data stores. Check backups and retention requirements before applying that idea anywhere with valuable state.

Where in MiniTickets

Read the path chapter, select the relevant map piece →, then inspect infra/src/budget.ts → createBudget. Work through the related case for a diagnostic example.