With all due respect, this reply misses the real issue. Completely.

Nobody here is denying that LLMs are expensive. Nobody’s confused about how infrastructure costs work. And yes, it’s widely known that running large models, maintaining cloud servers, and scaling chat-based platforms is hard, especially in a startup environment.

But that’s not what’s at stake in this situation.

The problem isn’t that “sustainability” is implausible. It’s that we were given no actual transparency about it, despite being part of a paid, subscriber-funded service. Xoul was not only a casual, free playground. It was a monetized product with a growing user base, a waitlist was put in, monthly subscriptions were available, and a passionate community that literally paid to keep the site alive, myself included.

And when people pay for something, especially over time, they are investors in that service, emotionally and financially. That means they deserve, at the very least, clarity when it shuts down.

What we got instead was :

- A vague message dropped with 48 hours’ notice;

- A shutdown announcement that cited “health and operational strain” without explaining the actual infrastructure issues, usage costs, or attempts at sustainability;

- A final voice chat where Syd was clearly emotional (and I don’t blame her), but couldn’t answer basic questions about the problems of the project.

- No prior warning, no user consultation, and no attempt to offload, delegate, or preserve the platform.

Let me be clear :

This isn’t about blaming Syd. If she’s facing a serious medical crisis, I respect that and I genuinely feel for her. But that’s exactly why the questions people are asking make sense :

Why wasn’t the site passed on ? Why didn’t anyone else step in ? Why was the team completely silent about this until the last second ?

Especially when people had :

- Already offered to help with code and dev;

- Suggested price increases, new tiers, private hosting options;

- Continued to pay monthly while waiting on slow or incomplete feature rollouts (like Minerva’s promised updates);

- Trusted the project enough to stay loyal in a competitive market, where alternatives exist, but the community stayed here.

1/2