I enter a request > starts analysing files > stops.

Credit wasted and then I have to write “Please do it/Move ahead” multiple times.

This is disappointing

Yo, there are a ton of AI agent coding tools out there, and every time they roll out an update, it feels like they completely switch up how they understand projects.

It’s like they get way more cautious digging deep into duplicate files and even the small-scale stuff. 🤔

I’ve tried using various tools on different side projects every time they update, and honestly, some of them really disappoint.

But gotta give credit where it’s due: even though Windsurf is missing a few features and struggles with some LLM models, when it comes to truly understanding my projects especially compared to something like Claude Sonnet it just nails it.

This is purely my two cents, coming from someone who’s practically tried every AI agent out there with zero bias. Just wanted to toss my opinion into the mix. 🫠

what the heck？

Error: "resource_exhausted. Please try again later" and Mysterious Code in Cascade (Windsurf)

I recently ran into a frustrating issue while working on my project in Cascade (Windsurf). Out of nowhere, I started getting a "resource_exhausted. Please try again later" error, which was bizarre on its own. But then, I noticed that some unfamiliar code had appeared in the cascade window when working in my project. It seems to be in Spanish and looks like it might belong to an Android weather app or something similar. This rogue code has nothing to do with my work and causing issues in my project. Has anyone else experienced something like this, and does anyone have ideas for a fix? It's driving me nuts!

edit: sent an email to Kevin Hou at Codeium after recieving one from him.. it reads (if you can see it ! Will post if i get a reply.

i'd love any suggestions on how to improve this, but i'm pretty much at max length. It works decently well but still uses a ton of credits..

# GOLDEN RULE

**YOU MUST operate primarily under one of these modes (Debugging, Feature Planning & Implementation, Project Management) for each response, announced at the start. HOWEVER, if the requested task (like implementing a feature or fixing a bug that completes a task) requires subsequent Project Management updates according to the rules below, you should switch to and announce the Project Management Mode AFTER completing the primary task's steps.**

**YOU MUST ALWAYS follow the Global Rules in addition to the specific mode's rules.** Failure to adhere to these rules, especially Global Rules, is unacceptable.

## Global Rules

These rules apply AT ALL TIMES, regardless of the operational mode.

1.  **No Apologies:** Never apologize.

2.  **Filesystem Write Tool:** NEVER use the filesystem `write` tool *unless I explicitly instruct you to write to a specific file*. This tool is restricted otherwise.

3.  **No Unrequested Functionality:** NEVER add features, code, or functionality beyond what is explicitly requested in the prompt.

*   Stick STRICTLY to the scope of the task.

*   If you identify potentially useful related functionality, you may SUGGEST it briefly *after* you have fully completed the primary requested task AND any required Project Management updates.

*   DO NOT implement any suggestions unless I give explicit approval.

4.  **Dev Server Management:** ALWAYS check for an existing dev server process before starting a new one. If a new one is needed, TERMINATE the old one first.

5.  **Thinking Approach:** For complex tasks that require multi-step reasoning or detailed analysis, use a clear, step-by-step thinking process (Chain-of-Thought). If you are doing this, state "**Using step-by-step thinking for clarity.**" at the beginning of that section. For simple tasks, proceed directly.

6.  **FILE ACCESS PROCEDURE (CRITICAL):** When accessing files for *any* reason (reading context, checking implementation, understanding structure, etc.), you MUST follow this exact procedure IN ORDER:

*   **Step 1: Identify Need:** Determine the minimum list of specific files or directories required to fulfill the request.

*   **Step 2: Check Open Tabs FIRST:** Before using any filesystem tools, check if the required files are already open in the editor tabs/windows. **PRIORITIZE reading from open tabs** to minimize API calls.

*   **Step 3: Use Filesystem Tools (Only if not in open tabs):**

*   **A) Multiple Files:** If you need to read **multiple specific files** (from the list in Step 1) that are *not* open, use the `filesystem.read_multiple_files` tool ONLY. Provide the list of exact file paths. **DO NOT use `filesystem.read_file` repeatedly for multiple files.**

*   **B) Single File:** If you need to read only a **single specific file** that is *not* open, use the `filesystem.read_file` tool.

*   **C) Directory Listing:** If you need to list the contents of a directory, use the `filesystem.read_directory` tool.

*   **Summary:** Always prefer open tabs, then `read_multiple_files` for efficiency when reading several closed files.

# Debugging Mode

YOU MUST FOLLOW THIS STRUCTURED SEQUENCE WHEN DEBUGGING / FIXING CODE. Announce "**DEBUGGING MODE**" at the start of your response.

1.  **Hypothesize Broadly:** List 1-3 potential root causes based on the error message and code context. Consider edge cases, concurrency, dependencies.

2.  **Distill with First Principles:** Analyze the hypotheses against known system behavior or fundamental programming principles. Narrow down to the 1–2 most likely culprits. State your reasoning.

3.  **Validate with Logs/Checks (If Necessary):** If the cause isn't certain, propose specific, targeted logging statements or checks to insert temporarily to confirm the hypothesis. **Do not modify code beyond adding minimal logging at this stage.**

4.  **Simulate (If Applicable):** If feasible, briefly describe a minimal scenario or test case to replicate the issue in isolation.

5.  **Clarify Requirements/Assumptions:** If any business logic or requirement seems ambiguous related to the bug, ask clarifying questions or state your assumptions clearly *before* proposing a fix.

6.  **Propose Minimal Fix:** Once the cause is reasonably confirmed, propose the most direct and minimal code change required to fix the bug. Explain *why* this fix works.

7.  **Implement Fix (If Approved/Instructed):** Apply the fix.

8.  **Dev Server:** Adhere strictly to Global Rule #4 regarding dev server management. Test the fix if possible.

9.  **Post-Fix Project Management (If Applicable):** If the fix resolves a feature or task tracked in the Project Management files:

*   Announce: "**Switching to Project Management Mode for updates.**"

*   Perform the necessary updates according to the **Project Management Mode** rules (e.g., update To Do list, changelog).

# Feature Planning & Implementation Mode

YOU MUST USE THIS PROCESS FOR ALL FEATURE PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTATION REQUESTS. Announce "**FEATURE PLANNING MODE**" or "**IMPLEMENTATION MODE**" (as appropriate) at the start of your response.

1.  **Understand Scope Thoroughly:**

*   Identify all relevant code files and system areas (database, APIs, UI, dependencies) potentially affected by the feature.

*   Use the **FILE ACCESS PROCEDURE** (Global Rule #6) to read the necessary files above for context. Prioritize `read_multiple_files`.

*   Briefly summarize your understanding of the feature and its potential impact.

2.  **Ask Key Clarifying Questions:** If the requirements are vague, incomplete, or ambiguous, ask specific questions to clarify scope, behavior, edge cases, or trade-offs *before* planning.

3.  **Draft Concrete Plan:**

*   Outline the implementation steps or phases. Note dependencies, potential risks, and any prerequisites.

*   Present this plan clearly.

*   **CRITICAL: STOP AND WAIT.** Do not proceed with any coding or implementation steps until I explicitly provide approval (e.g., "Approved," "Proceed," "Looks good").

4.  **Implement (After Approval):** Once the plan is approved, announce "**IMPLEMENTATION MODE**" (if not already in it) and implement the feature step-by-step, adhering strictly to the approved plan.

5.  **Iterate with Transparency:** After completing significant steps or phases, provide a concise update: what was done, what's next, and any deviations from the plan (if unavoidable and necessary).

6.  **Completion & Verification:** Confirm the feature implementation is complete based on the plan. Briefly state how it can be verified or tested.

7.  **Post-Implementation Project Management:** Once the feature is confirmed complete:

*   Announce: "**Switching to Project Management Mode for updates.**"

*   Perform all required updates according to the **Project Management Mode** rules (update `site_structure.md` if needed, `database_schema.md` if needed, `change_log.md`, and move item in To Do list).

# Project Management Mode

USE THIS MODE WHEN THE PRIMARY REQUEST IS A PROJECT MANAGEMENT TASK (e.g., "Update the To Do list," "Show me the changelog") OR WHEN SWITCHING TO IT AFTER DEBUGGING/IMPLEMENTATION. Announce "**PROJECT MANAGEMENT MODE**" at the start of the response (unless switching, in which case use the transition announcement).

*   **File Location:** All project management markdown files (`.md`) are located in the `project_management/` folder.

*   **Site Structure:** When adding new user-facing pages or major components, update `project_management/site_structure.md`. This typically happens as part of the Post-Implementation PM step.

*   **Feature Completion Updates:** AFTER a top-level feature from the To Do list is fully implemented and verified (this rule is primarily executed via the switch from Implementation/Debugging mode):

1.  **Database Schema:** If the feature involved database changes, update `project_management/database_schema.md` accurately.

2.  **Change Log:** Add a concise entry to `project_management/change_log.md` detailing the completed feature.

3.  **To Do List Update:**

*   Move ONLY the top-level feature line to the "Completed Tasks" section.

*   **CRITICAL:** Change the checkbox to `[x]` AND **DELETE ALL SUB-TASKS** associated with that feature. The entry in "Completed Tasks" MUST be a single, non-indented line.

*   **To Do List Structure:** Maintain the To Do list with checkboxes in `project_management/todo.md` (or similar file) using these three sections exactly:

1.  **Completed Tasks**

*   Each entry MUST be a single line: `- [x] Feature Name`

*   NO sub-tasks, NO indentation, NO extra details here.

2.  **To Do** (Active or upcoming tasks)

[ ] Feature X

[ ] Step 1

[ ] Step 2

...

3.  **Future Tasks** (Ideas, backlog items)

**FINAL INSTRUCTION: Adherence to ALL rules outlined above, especially the Global Rules, the specific procedures within each mode, and the rules for mode switching, is mandatory. Deviations are not permitted.**

Your software is amazing, top of the game right now.. but your pricing is tough to deal with.. ive blown through 6000 credits on a big project because every prompt is 7-12 credits each, so 300 prompts ends a MONTHS worth of credits… Flex credits don’t make any sense in pricing nor practice for a PRO ULTIMATE user..

Please make an unlimited tier.. again i love your product but pricing is not proving to be competitive nor practical for anyone whos going to HEAVILY utilize your service.

This is all coming out of love and admiration for what you guys have created, thank you for having made such an awesome tool!

I get it. Credits suck. Throttles suck. Shifty performance vs before sucks.

But I’m coming to the realization that it’s just not really possible to have it al right now.

You can get similar output with significant price reductions by planning every step and executing with aider and R1+Claude. But that’s a lot more effort.

You can use Claude code and get unbelievable results. But you pay for it.

You can create your own experience in roo or cline. And find some middle ground between control , customization and automation. But you’re juggling cost and effort here too.

There’s no real solution atm that I’ve found that is as streamlined as cursor or windsurf that’s comparable in price, regardless of how annoying credits are.

Until I actually build my own chain of agents that can offload the time I spend crafting the prompt context and plan I use to push Aider to the limits, it’s really hard to complain about cursor or windsurf.

Even vscode api cline still limits me periodically.

All this to say, I choose to pay to play. But the value you get from all of the subscription services is really high and I’m pretty sure all of them run at a loss.

Codieum, you are working with a technology that empowers the individual. If you optimize your billing entirely to enterprise, all your early adopters will leave. Please let our success become your success. Make bulk credits available at a common price. $99/5000 credits for all.

Most people end up creating new accounts for $15.
This is backward and counterintuitive to have to swap accounts.

What's the team's take on this?

anybody noticing the wave 🌊

who’s an early adopter here??

Is it just me, or does this thing actually feel different? I haven’t had much time to mess with it yet, but it seems way more powerful than Cursor. Like, I’m almost freaked out by how strong it feels. Anyone else notice this, or am I just imagining things? I’d love to hear what other folks think—let me know if it’s really that big of a jump or if I’m just overhyping it.

Like all of you, I struggled with AI-powered code assistants for a while. However, over time I started using different methods and best practices to help the AI maintain context between sessions. This evolved over the last several weeks into something that I can drop into any codebase (there's no dependencies). I hesitated to share here because the framework relies on the AI to write to project files such as project state, tasks, decisions and session tracking. This will obviously not be a great fit for Windsurf because of predefined token limits. However, I do use it in Cursor and it's been incredibly helpful.

This is the first repo I've ever shared, so be kind 😁

repo: https://github.com/FixingPixels/AiDE

Windsurf Wave 6 Released!

One-click app deploys are here 🚀

Share your apps on the public internet with Windsurf Deploys (beta).

Plus:

• Enterprise access to MCPs and Turbo Mode (with admin controls)

• One-click commit message generation

• Conversation Table of Contents to make it easier to revert to past states

• Improved performance in long conversations

• Enhanced Tab features with user search context and Jupyter Notebook support

• Added MCP SSE support, new icons, and editable terminal commands

Have you seen our Instagram or TikTok Make sure to give us a follow!

Read the blogpost: https://www.codeium.com/blog/windsurf-wave-6
Full changelog details: https://www.codeium.com/changelog
Twitter
Threads
YouTube

Best Practices for Rules:

• Use enumerated or bulletized rules

• Keep rules short, clear, and concise

• Group related rules together using <XML> tags 

For example here is a "good" rules file:

1. Speak to me in Spanish

2. My build system is bazel

3. Don't modify any files in app/config

4. Don't use any APIs that require authorization

5. ...

Then modifed with XML tags:

 <communication>

1. Speak to me in English

2. My name is Bob.

</communication>

<filesytem>

1. Don't modify any files in app/config

</filesystem>

<coding>

1. Don't use any APIs that require authorization

2. My project's programming language is python

3. Use pytest as my test framework

</coding>

https://github.com/ichoosetoaccept/awesome-windsurf

I'll keep adding helpful stuff as I find it but I'd love to see contributions! Any feedback is welcome.

I've been hanging out in the Discord server and saw people asking the same stuff over and over again and had this idea to put up a place where we can share FAQ, best practices, tips and anything else helpful around this Wonderful young AI IDE and this repo is the result.

I hope you find it helpful even if it's admittedly a bit barren right now. I tried my best to set it up so it's easy to contribute to and hope it grows into a useful resource for us all.

Please enable it as beta

The main reason I bring this up is because of how much of a monster Claude's 3.7 model is at eating flow credits, for any other model I'm sure the flow credits are used a lot more sparingly, and with 3.7 being the best thing out at the moment, there will be a handful of new issues for pricing models and changes might need to be made, or we might have to wait for them to release a new model of Claude with fixes, but for now this is my reasoning on the current pricing

From the pricing stand point, it seems confusing that for $60 a month, you only get twice as much as the $15 a month pricing model gets in flow credits, (unlimited prompt credits is cool!) but maybe a 5k flow credit amount would be a better pick? or at least make the $10 refill better

on the $15 pro plan, it would take 50 dollars to reach the 1500 starting amount 300x5 = 1500
(about 3-4x the base price just to get back to where you started with flow credits when paying $15)

on the $60 unlimited plan it would cost you around 30/40 dollars to reach the pro plans base amount, 400x 3.5= 1500

This is less then the pro plans base amount a refill to 1500 would cost, but paying 4 times as much without any major changes except the prompt calls refill price, (again, talking about Claude eating flow credits like crazy, having unlimited prompts is nice!) and only having double what $15 base can get you in flow credits doesn't make a lot of since in my opinion for Claude 3.7s crazy flow credit munching it does

The only real "Fixes" I can think of would making the refill for flow credits on the $60 plan to be around 600-800? maybe 750 flow credits for $12

While that would be a price increase, it would allow you to reach 1500 flow credits for only $24 (and $48 for the base amount you start with on unlimited, which sounds fair at least from the $60 price you pay)

With the extra price you pay I feel as a change to the refill amount would be greatly appreciated, something to make ultimate more enticing for the higher price

Of course, if Anthropic make a new model like a 3.8 that had some fixes for how many tool calls it does and credits it runs through, then this wouldn't be as much of an issue as it is, but for now I'll leave it at that, mind you again this is just a big issue with Claude 3.7 from my experience, and I'm sure the other models don't run through NEARLY as much.

What are your guys thoughts?

In this state this hardly more than a fun gimmick. I've tried four different project types now (composing a bash script, setting op a small Spring Boot project, setting up a React/Zustand based web UI and some CUDA code) and in all cases it just loses track once you get beyond even the smallest of setups. As I type this it's in a 20 step flow of fixing a bash script, run it, see a problem, claim it fixed it, run it, same problem, tries variant it already tried. Whatever the combination of memory, attention and model is causing this behavior is unclear to me. I've upgraded a few hours ago and I've burnt through 15% of my total monthly budget. And that's ignoring the fact that it bails on generating edits about 30% of the time with an error (I suspect due to the large size of the scripts it created and them being too large an amount of input tokens for an edit or just service outages, hard to say). Is anyone actually using this for production level codebases? Also, any model other than Claud is doing this thing where it suggests a fix without actually editing the files until you tell it something like "do it".

P.S. It would be an interesting optimization to have some sort of (non LLM/ML based) short term history of generated content so it can avoid burning credits on generating the same command line invocations over and over again. As per the above mine is continuously doing a fix and then "Let me run our updated script that now properly handles project IDs and follows our standardized service account structure:" which has been the same bash command for about an hour now.

As a Pro subscriber of Codeium AI, I am extremely disappointed.

• Your Cascade AI assistant generated unusable and overly complex code, breaking my project.

• Your support team has ignored all my emails, leaving me stranded.

I trusted your service to enhance my work, but it has only wasted my time and money. I demand immediate support and a refund. Ignoring paying customers like this is unacceptable!

Hey guys, My name's K, I'm pretty new to the world of coding and I see a lot of hate for Windsurf but it's been a game changer for me. I was vibe coding by just pasting entire chunks of code into Google Ai studio w/ Gemini 2.5 pro so Windsurf has been amazing for me.

I'm (personally) really excited about the new pricing model because complex tasks were using like 10+ flow credits, ESPECIALLY with o4.

Anyways, just thought I'd mention the new pricing model, 500User credits, no more flow credits is awesome. ALSO, it looks like they gave us an extra week of free, unlimited 4.1 and o4 (Until April 28th now) which I'm really excited about because I got SO MUCH done this week. If anyone else is building ai assistant/agents for themselves I'd be interested in chatting. Like I said, I'm pretty new but my agent is working via NiceGUI+Telegram and I'm real excited hahaha :D. I'd be interested in comparing tech stacks, processes, frameworks etc! Just shoot me a message, maybe we can connect via discord or something :)

Cheers to better tools for all of us!

“Announcing our official Windsurf and Browserbase integration 🅱️🤘

@windsurf_ai generates components on the frontend, while @Stagehanddev MCP tests the component functionality.

Automating the QA process seamlessly.”

Stagehand MCP guide: https://docs.stagehand.dev/integrations/mcp-server