Estimate operation resource cost

Core meaning

Capability purpose: Give an owner or authorized policy evaluator enough cost information to choose whether and how deeply an operation should proceed.
Meaningful outcome: A current estimate identifies the operation, scope, unit, range or class, assumptions, method/version, uncertainty, validity window, and available lower-cost scope choices.
Boundaries — includes: operation and input scope, depth or effort class, estimated quantity or range, resource/cost unit, assumptions, uncertainty, estimate method/version, expiry, alternatives, and failure to estimate.
Boundaries — excludes: approving the operation, reserving capacity or credits, recording actual consumption, billing, payment, selecting a provider, and executing the operation.
Terms and concepts: An estimate may use a schema.org/QuantitativeValue or schema.org/MonetaryAmount where applicable. An internal credit is a comparison/control unit unless an adopted commercial profile gives it monetary meaning.

Actor: The owner, an authorized planner, policy evaluator, workflow, or agent preparing a cost-governed operation.
Command / intent: Estimate the likely resource cost for a declared operation and scope before execution.
Current state: The intended operation, input scope, depth/options, applicable unit, available estimating method, and relevant constraints can be determined.
Policies / invariants: The estimate remains distinct from approval, reservation, charge, and actual usage; uncertainty and assumptions are visible; false precision is avoided; alternative scopes do not become selected without a separate decision; materially stale estimates are not represented as current.
Transition: Evaluate the declared scope using the current method and produce a versioned range, class, or bounded quantity with assumptions and validity.
Result: A usable estimate, an explicit cannot-estimate result, or a requirement for additional scope information.
Events / effects: May inform a proposal, execution policy, budget reservation, scope reduction, deferral, or owner-attention item.
Unknowns: Universal units, confidence bands, expiry periods and acceptable estimation error are not established.

An estimate must not be presented as actual consumption or permission to execute.
The estimated operation and scope must be identifiable and reproducible enough to compare with later usage.

Domain-specific estimating methods and conversion among time, tokens, compute, credits, energy and money require profiles.

Statement	Semantic class	Evidence status	Source / note
Cost estimation is a distinct pre-execution outcome that supports informed scope and approval decisions without granting execution authority.	rule/invariant	sourced	R01–R04.