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by janpaul123 418 days ago
Yeah, my colleague just wrote about this exact problem of incentive misalignment with Cursor and Windsurf https://blog.kilocode.ai/p/why-cursors-flat-fee-pricing-will

The economist in me is says "just show the prices", though the psychologist in me says "that's hella stressful". ;)

1 comments

Why does the psychologist in you say "that's hella stressful", e.g. Stressful for who? What is the source of their stress?
Seeing the $ every time I do something, even if it's $0.50, can be a little stressful. We should have an option to hide it per-request and just show a progress bar for the current topup.
I find a progress bar for a top up much more stressful than just a counter of how much I've spent.

Counting down to a deadline vs counting up to nothing.

If it costs money and spending money is stressful, there has to be a cost somewhere, we can't remove the stress entirely.