Today we burned through our AI credits.
Not metaphorically.
Actually burned through them.
When we started building Ostrya AI, I was mostly running on the Codex Max plan.
Then launch got close.
So for this deadline, we bought the $200 Claude subscription too.
Today, that ran out.
And instead of slowing down, we decided to invest in the deadline and get another one.
So now we’re basically rolling with 3 premier AI models, all maxed out, all the expensive stuff.
A year ago, I would have probably overthought this.
“Is it worth it?”
“Are we spending too much?”
“Can we manage with less?”
But the more I build, the more I’m realizing:
Good tools are not expenses when the constraint is speed.
They are leverage.
Especially when you are trying to compress months of product work into days.
Of course, AI does not magically build the product for you.
You still need taste.
You still need engineering judgment.
You still need to know what to ask, what to reject, what to debug, and what to ship.
But with the right workflow, it genuinely feels like one engineer can move with the output of a small team.
My current lesson:
Do not be cheap with tools that increase your rate of learning, building, and shipping.
Set a hard deadline.
Invest in the leverage.
Then make it impossible for yourself to not move.
6 days left for launch.
Scene tight hai, but we move.
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