Note
September 25, 2026
2 min read
A Week's Worth by Tuesday
By Cristiano Pierry
As AI tasks grow, subscribers need clearer usage estimates and receipts to judge value and make their allowance last.
A year ago, $20 a month felt like plenty for what we asked AI to do. A few months ago, $200 felt almost impossible to use up. Now a weekly allowance can be gone in a couple of days. We have become very good at finding things for these models to do.
Part of that is good news. A single request can become hours of research, coding, testing, and revision. Some models cost less per token than they used to, and we are asking them to take on much more work. Running out faster does not, by itself, mean we are getting less value.
I still want to know what the subscription is buying me. The pricing page tells me what I pay, and the usage meter tells me what is left. Neither tells me what a task is likely to cost, what consumed the allowance, or how I could have used the plan more wisely. A token count does not tell me whether this was a smart use of the subscription.
Give me a rough estimate before a long task and a plain-language receipt after it. Show me when a lighter model or a narrower request would have been enough. If the week's allowance is gone by Tuesday, I want to know what I got for it and how to make it last longer next week.
This writing reflects my personal perspectives on product management, AI, and content discovery. It does not represent the official position of my employer or any affiliated organization.