Let's talk about the $200 ChatGPT Pro plan
Promotions and resets made 20× feel like what $200 bought. The allowance can shrink on schedule while the expectation outlasts the offer.
AI Tools
Writing on AI Tools, newest first.
16articles in this collection2025–2026
6 min
Dot is helpful, but not clever enough yet
Dot made airline miles easier to understand. It also made me ask what it takes to trust a personal agent with work beyond a chat.
AI Pricing Is Becoming UX
GPT-5.6 turns capability into a price ladder, while Codex Spark turns speed into a separate button. AI pricing is becoming part of the interface.
The Best Coding Agent Is the One You Can Keep Using
Grok Build produces useful patches, but its weekly limit changes how I use it. The harness and quota now matter more than the model.
Learning Rust with Claude Code Through Local Hardware Projects
Claude Code lowers the cost of being a Rust beginner. It kept two local-hardware projects moving while I learned the language inside them.
Your Linter Needs to Be as Fast as Your AI
Biome keeps my AI coding loop moving, but it doesn't replace TypeScript. Here is the current setup and the trade-off I kept.
Claude Code Plugins Turn Instructions Into Dependencies
I expected Claude Code plugins to be heavy infrastructure. The frontend-design plugin is mostly Markdown; the marketplace makes it installable and scoped.
Document Your Quirks: Why CLAUDE.md Changes Everything
I spent 45 minutes teaching Claude a fix I already knew. Putting that project quirk in CLAUDE.md stopped the same rediscovery next time.
ChatGPT Atlas Automates the Easy Part of Browsing
After using Comet for coupons, search, and summaries, I am not convinced putting an agent in the browser solves the hard part: judgment.
Claude Code Comes to the Web and iOS
Claude Code on the web changes coding from an editor interaction into delegated work. That matters more than adding another interface.
Sora Isn't the Problem: It's the Mirror
Using Sora in a TikTok-style feed made social media's incentive problem hard to ignore: fabricated video is now cheaper than recording reality.
Claude Haiku 4.5: Cheap and Fast
I use Claude Haiku for small refactors, review, and debugging. Its lower cost and faster responses matter more there than deeper reasoning.
Windsurf Simplified Pricing While OpenAI Circled
Windsurf removed flow action credits and cut team pricing while OpenAI acquisition talks were being reported. I cared more about the simpler bill.
OpenAI Playing Catch-Up in the AI Coding Wars
OpenAI talked a ~$3B Windsurf deal. I use Claude Code and Cursor; the story that matters is who owns the IDE relationship, not the model API.
Public Code Gives AI More Context to Work With
Public libraries give coding agents examples, documentation, and discussions they can retrieve. Private APIs must supply that context themselves.
Perplexity replaces Google Search and Apple News for me
I use Perplexity for most search and for a daily news skim. Google for the stubborn queries. Apple News lost the paywall fight.
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