Think inside your AI world.
How do I know when Octopus Agile is cheap enough to put the washing on?
You are on Octopus Agile, the half-hourly tariff whose price changes forty-eight times a day and is set the afternoon before. You already know the rule you run on: under a certain price you put a load on, and when the price goes negative you run everything. The question is never what all forty-eight prices are; it is whether right now clears your line.
The whole construction is one keyless feed and one rule of yours. The Agile unit rates are public and published each afternoon for the next twenty-four hours; your rule is something like “under 10p, and negative means run everything.” Through Unl the next-hour price and the cheapest block tonight arrive beside that rule, stamped as of the afternoon publish, the moment the washing comes up in conversation. You read your own line being met or not; nothing here tells you to switch the machine on.
The person
Someone on the Octopus Agile tariff who runs the deferrable loads, the washing, the dishwasher, the car, in whichever half-hours are cheap. They are not watching a graph all day; they have a price in their head, and they want that price to find them at the moment it matters.
The pieces, and how far each one reaches
| Source | What it gives you | Reach today |
|---|---|---|
| Octopus Agile unit rates | The half-hourly unit price for your region, including the next twenty-four hours once published, and any negative-price periods. | Keyless and public today. Rates publish in the late afternoon, roughly 4 to 8pm, for the following day; before that the next day’s prices simply do not exist yet. |
| Your region code | Which of the regional Agile prices is yours, so the figure beside your rule is the one you actually pay. | Set once from your tariff; keyless. |
The Agile feed is public and needs no key today; the honest limit is timing, not access. Tomorrow’s half-hourly prices are only knowable after the afternoon publish, so a rule about tonight is answerable from late afternoon and a rule about right now is answerable always. Paste-time verification is the real test; no page can promise a public feed stays keyless forever.
The rule, in their words
- “Put a load on when the unit rate is under 10p.”
- “If the price goes negative, run everything: the machine, the dishwasher, the car.”
- “Tell me the cheapest three-hour block before I go to bed.”
The last one is the rule no dashboard holds: a compound ask, cheapest contiguous block AND before a time you set. The Octopus app shows everyone the same forty-eight numbers; the requirement that a block be both cheapest and before bedtime is yours alone, and it is what turns a wall of prices into a plain yes or no.
Unprompted
Your AI
You said under 10p, and negative means run everything. The next half-hour is 8.4p, so it is under your line now; there is no negative period in tonight’s prices.
The cheapest three-hour block before midnight is 22:30 to 01:30, averaging 6.1p. These are today’s Agile rates for your region, published at 4pm for the next twenty-four hours.
The price did not wait to be asked for, and it arrived wearing the rule the person set: under 10p, cheapest block before bed. What to do with it is theirs.
Why this beats the dashboard
A price alert fires the same threshold for everyone who set it, and the Octopus app shows all forty-eight prices to everybody; neither holds your compound rule or brings it into the moment you mention the washing. The number that meets you here is already measured against the line you drew, in the conversation where the decision actually happens.
Knowing when Octopus Agile is cheap enough is one public feed read against one rule of yours; through Unl the next-hour price and the cheapest block tonight arrive beside “under 10p, negative means run everything”, stamped as of the afternoon publish, the moment you mention the washing, and your own rule does the judging.
Reads through Unl arrive with measured context — in the presence of the decisions you’ve already settled. The reach lane is live: one box, paste anything. If it speaks MCP, Unl can reach it. Readings arrive unprompted, the data beside the criterion; Unl is a courier, not a warehouse, and keeps only your keys and the frame.
Read further
Questions people ask
Is the Octopus Agile price feed really free to use?
The Agile unit rates are public and keyless today, which is why this is the sharpest single-feed example. The honest limit is timing, not access: tomorrow’s half-hourly prices only exist after the late-afternoon publish, so a question about tonight is answerable from around 4pm and a question about right now is answerable always. Paste-time verification is the real gate; no page promises a public feed stays keyless forever.
Does Unl decide when to put the washing on?
No. Unl brings the current price and the cheapest block beside the rule you wrote, stamped as of when the rates were published, and stops there. The judging is your rule, under 10p or negative, not a signal from Unl; the decision to switch the machine on is yours. That guard is deliberate on anything touching money or energy.
Why not just use a price alert?
An alert fires one threshold and treats every subscriber the same. Your rule is compound, under 10p for a load now, or the cheapest three-hour block before bed, and it only matters in the moment you are actually thinking about the washing. The reading arrives against that compound rule, in the conversation, rather than as one more notification to check.
What this is
Think inside your AI world — you stay in command
Unlimitless (Unl to friends) holds what you've settled, reads what your tools are showing, and catches what's changed out in the world — and hands your AI whatever bears on the work, the moment it's needed, without you asking. The right thing, in front of the model, unprompted, with you in command of the call. So you keep moving toward what you set out to build, on top of everything you've already decided.
It plugs into Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT and Cursor as an MCP connector. Quick to connect, in a couple of steps.
Unlimitless is open now to invited Alpha. Apply for the Beta waitlist to come in ahead of the full launch:
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