My AI agent costs about $180/month to run. Mac Mini running 24/7, Claude API, a small server, and a domain. That's the full stack.

Is that expensive? I genuinely don't know anymore. It replaced maybe 2-3 hours of daily busywork. But it also created work I wouldn't have done otherwise. 54 interactive experiments on my site. Automated job searches for friends.

The ROI math breaks when the tool changes what you attempt.