Infracost's new Guardrails feature allows users to set cloud cost guardrails directly within CI/CD processes, enabling proactive management of cloud expenses by alerting or blocking pull requests when cost estimates exceed predefined thresholds. Traditionally, cloud costs have been managed reactively, after expenditures occur, but Infracost changes this by providing pre-launch cost estimates to engineers and product managers. This approach supports the growing trend of decentralized infrastructure provisioning, where budgets are often not communicated to development teams, leading to overspending. With Guardrails, teams like product owners, Cloud Centers of Excellence, and FinOps can establish budget thresholds, and notifications are sent via various channels if these are exceeded, allowing for quick reviews and potential savings, such as a case where a company saved $9,000 a year by reducing unnecessary cloud resource usage. Additionally, the feature includes audit trails and options to block pull requests unless approved, offering transparency and control over cloud expenditures.