Free tiers, used well
You can learn this entire course on free tiers. You cannot do it while spending the whole allowance before lunch.
Everything in this course works on free tiers. People still hit the wall by mid-afternoon, and almost always for the same three reasons.
They let the agent read the whole repository when three files would have done. They paste a two-thousand-line file to find one bug. And they let an agent loop on a failing test for twenty minutes instead of stopping it after the second attempt.
None of those is a bigger question. They are the same questions asked expensively.
The budget below is relative rather than measured, so focus on the ratios. A whole-repository read can cost many times more than a simple concept question.
Press the two preset buttons and compare. Both days do about the same amount of learning. One costs three times the other.
One day on a free tier
100 of 100 leftRelative costs, not measurements. The ratios hold on any provider: a whole-repo read really is thirty times a concept question.
Nothing yet. Try a realistic morning and see where you land.
Those two preset buttons do roughly the same amount of learning. One costs 94, the other 17. The difference is not discipline, it is knowing which jobs need the tool that can see your files.
The habit worth building now: before a large request, ask whether a smaller version gets the same answer. Usually it does, and finding the forty relevant lines yourself is the part that taught you something anyway.
You should now be able to
- Estimate the relative cost of a request before making it
- Move a task to a cheaper tool without losing the learning
- Recognise the three habits that burn an allowance fastest
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