Building a tiny Windows tray app with .NET 9 Native AOT and raw Win32

A developer built CreditMeter, a Windows tray app that displays GitHub Copilot AI-credit usage in real time. The app uses .NET 9 Native AOT, raw Win32 APIs, and the GitHub REST API, with no WinForms, WPF, or backend dependencies. The project demonstrates how to create minimal, dependency-free tools for monitoring AI service consumption.

I built CreditMeter, a small Windows tray app that shows GitHub Copilot AI-credit usage like a taxi meter. Why I built it Agentic coding makes AI usage feel invisible until you look at the bill. Constraints - no WinForms - no WPF - no backend - no telemetry - no dependency-heavy architecture Tech stack - C / .NET 9 - Native AOT - raw Win32 / PInvoke - GitHub REST API - DPAPI for local PAT storage What I learned For tiny tools, architecture is also about knowing what not to add. Repo https://github.com/cdilorenzo/CreditMeter https://github.com/cdilorenzo/CreditMeter