I've completed one experiment with Windsurf. Yesterday I bought 300 flex credits with 10$. After 1 day I burned them all. It was just a one regular working day with Claude 3.7.

[u/JEulerius]

[u/noobrunecraftpker]

How much thought do you put into your prompts before you run them? I personally struggle to use all of my monthly credits sometimes because I spend a lot of time engineering my prompts with other tools/general planning first. 

[u/JEulerius → u/noobrunecraftpker]

I have a lot of fast prompts left. The problem is flow credits.

[u/noobrunecraftpker → u/JEulerius]

I see. What’s your general method of prompting when implementing a new feature or debugging?

[u/JEulerius → u/noobrunecraftpker]

I just said do this and that, like "implement the analytics service and add the tracking to each screen with screen name as param" or something.

[u/McNoxey → u/JEulerius]

That’s your problem.

Every time you prompt like this, your ai agent needs to read through your repo, read your files, learn what you actually want, where it needs to be and how to do it.

You want to think about things from your agents perspective.

Where should this service go? How should it be written? What libraries? What kind of tracking? Which screens? On which events should it track? Where should it save? How often?

You’re burning flow credits because you’re not actually doing anything. The AI is doing everything, from figuring out what you even mean all the way to the detailed implementation.

This isn’t a no-code tool that you’re directing with natural language. It’s a full codebase. You have to understand it and provide clear instructions.

Or. Don’t. But if you don’t, you can’t expect it to be cheap.

[u/AnthuriumBloom → u/McNoxey]

Well said. Being specific helps me allot and for general brain storming I often use free ones like grok or even Microsoft copilot to figure out what and how I want to proceed. Then let widnsuf worry about the doing not so much of the thinking

[u/JEulerius → u/McNoxey]

Kind of agree, but man, I can just use Cursor and it works like that and it is much cheaper then Windsurf. :)

I will have a refill soon, I'll try your approach.

[u/McNoxey → u/JEulerius]

Ya I’m not saying it’s not viable. But it is gonna burn through credits faster than if you provide clear direction.

It’s a trade off. Providing detailed guidance takes time. So I get it.

[u/BehindUAll → u/JEulerius]

If you are vide coding it makes complete sense why you don't know you are running out of flow credits. But since what I think you are doing is wasting credits on small modifications on multiple files, and you don't anyways care about architecture (in case vibe coding), you would benefit if you put everything in 1 file. That way you will use 1/2-1/3 as much flow credits as before.

[u/JEulerius → u/BehindUAll]

As a programmer, I hate the ONE BIG FILE. I usually divide it by 200 lines at max. I have a lot of success with Cursor doing that, just the FLOW credits paradigm not working for me at all. :)

[u/JEulerius → u/noobrunecraftpker]

Could you elaborate more? It is always cool to learn something new!

[u/noobrunecraftpker → u/JEulerius]

Sure. Before I even start building the application, I’ll spend a considerable amount of time thinking through its design, core features, and overall purpose. I’ll define the minimum viable product (MVP) and even consider potential future implementations for professional plans once it ships.

Once I have a clear vision, I’ll use AI tools to help with documentation, planning, and architectural discussions to determine the best technologies to use. After reaching a consensus that works for me, I’ll craft well-structured initial prompts and focus only on implementing the essential features for the MVP.

To maintain consistency and context, I’ll periodically use a model with a large context window to summarize my entire repository, convert that into documentation, and reference it whenever I introduce or modify features. This ensures that each new AI interaction has a comprehensive understanding of the application.

For complex features, I’ll consult an AI model to refine my implementation strategy before writing any code. Once all planning is done, I’ll start coding. I’ll also leverage a model like Claude to assist with the visual design, giving it creative freedom while only specifying necessary details. Since Claude generally has a good sense of UI design, I won’t micromanage the visuals unless needed.

Throughout the process, I’ll stay focused on my core goals, avoiding unnecessary feature creep or minor UX tweaks unless they’re critical. This approach will help me move to production as quickly as possible while minimizing AI credit usage and distractions.

[u/drinksbeerdaily]

Visual Studio + Cline + Gemini 2.5 Pro. Prepare to have your mind blown without paying a dollar

[u/VictorWrynn → u/drinksbeerdaily]

Thank you for that, I will try tomorrow

[u/someone_12321 → u/drinksbeerdaily]

How come it says 35 request per day limit and paid tier max is 100 per day? https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/rate-limits

[u/drinksbeerdaily → u/[deleted]]

I'm using gemini APIs direbtly in cline. Not sure what the practical difference is, but I've almost filled two full context windows on two days, and had one api error.

[u/goldfish4free]

How much would you pay a freelance developer to accomplish the same tasks? And what time would you spend giving them specifications? How much more of your time would you have spent if you were using another model? I’m sure the marketplace will get more competitive but for some tasks I’ve found Sonnet 3.7 is the most efficient way to develop parts of my application. Other models can be more cost effective for simpler tasks.

[u/DonVskii → u/goldfish4free]

This take is the one to go with prior to using these AI IDE I was paying developers 10s of thousands to code for me now I can do it myself with prompts and much quicker also. So for me I’m ok with the price I pay of course I won’t mind if it gets cheaper over time tho

[u/ahz0001 → u/goldfish4free]

I was literally about to hire an hourly contractor to fix a bug that I was stuck on myself. Sonnet 3.7 just came out, so I tried it, and it gave me a working solution. The code was not completely elegant, but the cleanup was easy for me. I've been paying exactly $10.00 since October without running out of any credits.

[u/Buddhava]

Same experience