The Quota

AI model quotas are coins at an arcade, except they are absolutely useless if you save them.

Friday. I’ve got 17% left and the reset is tomorrow. Finally I get to spend. I’ve got the perfect project. So I fire off the job at the highest effort.

About 37 minutes later, the job finishes. 100%, just in time for the reset. Right next to the quota number. “Quota resets on...”

No fucking way. Resets Sunday? I mixed up the two AI quotas.

24 hours with zero percent. Good thing I poured the last 17 into... the best project I’ve ever created. Which still isn’t finished.

The other AI (which actually resets on Saturday) has 9% left. I can let this one finish the job. But what if I get a much better idea before the reset? I should probably save some. But I can’t save zero percent. So I aim for four percent.

8%. 7%. 6%. There’s no way this will use it all. At 5% I’m almost ready to press stop. And then it finishes.

Excellent. 4% left. Definitely not going to use those. And there’s no way I’ll ever mix up the quota days again.

Saturday. Finally got the reset I expected. It feels like waking up in an abundant world. I could spend as much as I want today. Could, but definitely shouldn’t.

It would be dumb to use the newly refreshed quota to continue on the heavy job. Worse than waiting for tomorrow’s reset and finishing it with the same model.

I don’t wait. I allow myself to use 15% of the new quota. But I only use two. Tomorrow’s gonna be a great day.

Sunday. Another fresh quota. I pick the main project back up at a lower effort setting. The cheap run finishes in two minutes and eighteen seconds. No idea if it’s the same quality, or if the light effort compromised everything the expensive job did.

Sunday night. Ah, fuck, I’ve already used a quarter of the week. Well, luckily I’m busy Monday and Tuesday. So Wednesday, when I get back, I’ll be rich.

Busy is relative. Even if I don’t sit with AI the whole day, I always get time for at least a few queries. But if I did, I could easily use two quotas in one day. I’ve got the solution: 5% a day, Monday and Tuesday. Knowing myself, by Wednesday, I probably won’t even have used that much.

Now it’s Thursday, and I’ve got 80% remaining. I had everything planned out, and now they give everyone a free reset to use whenever they want.

I could spend the rest of my quota today and hit the reset button. But I begin to doubt if I can spend an entire reset between now and Sunday. So I’ll save the reset until Monday and spend the entire quota in one day. Then I’ll have six days left to spend another one. Good thing I have a plan for next week already on Thursday.

A good friend hit the middle of his week with 2% left and was paralyzed for the rest of the week. Then another coworker said he was going home and couldn’t work anymore that day because he hit his quota.

I might be paralyzed, but it’s not due to lack of quota. I still have plenty because I saved for Wednesday. Time to quota dump. What if I blow through everything I have left today? And I have to use the free reset? Is two days enough to use an entire quota?

First step, spend freely. I let loose on the two projects waiting at the gates. Couple more small jobs. Now the backlog’s emptying. What do I work on now? Well, I can completely redesign a perfectly good homepage, or I can invent three experiments. I did all of these.

The backlog was running low, so I kept increasing the effort to spend my quota faster. The last job got the highest effort, but was of the lowest importance. It might not have even been on the backlog. Unnecessarily fantastic.

Friday, 12% remaining. Too late in the week to trip the reset. Everything’s done, so I continue inventing utterly nonsensical reasons to burn my usage. Exhausted and quota depleted, my excitement for Saturday begins to grow.

Boom, 100% again!