Inspiration
At lunch on shoot day 12, Aurora is $18,400 over — and camera looks guilty. Spreadsheets guess. HotCost proves it.
HotCost is a read-only day-close desk for film production. ClickHouse retrieves evidence. Python owns every dollar. Gemini only explains. A named human decides. The agent never writes the ledger.
What it does
Three shows. Three different causes. One investigation kernel.
| Show | Day | Variance | Cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aurora Protocol | 12 | +$18,400 | Delay cascade |
| Meridian | 8 | +$2,100 | Rate-card mismatch |
| Redline | 17 | +$6,800 | Duplicate invoice |
Aurora: $100,400 − $82,000 = $18,400. OT $9,450 + meals $3,600 = $13,050 cascade. Residual $5,350. The $12,500 duplicate PO is a separate commitment — not in that $18,400.
Meridian: 21 × 8h × $12.50 = $2,100. Paid $65 vs deal $52.50. Action: request reforecast only.
Redline: two invoices, same PO, same vendor, $6,800. Duplicate-invoice exception.
Stages: plan → validate → retrieve → normalize → calculate → critic → explain.
Try it: https://hotcost-77053371361.us-central1.run.app (must say live)
How we built it
Cloud Run hosts the app.
Google ADK runs the stages.
Official mcp-clickhouse retrieves (read-only user hotcost_agent_ro).
Python Decimal owns the money.
Gemini plans and explains only.
A UPM or Producer records the decision.
About 83 productions and 2 million timecards in ClickHouse Cloud. We do not claim 10 million live rows.
Challenges
Live retrieve takes tens of seconds. We show the stages instead of hiding the wait. We do not claim it is under 10 seconds.
We have a validation protocol for accountants. Zero sessions recorded. No fake quotes.
What's next
Sit with two people who already close film days. Keep the database user read-only.
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