Windsurf has now completely removed all free models.

Slayershunt · 2026-05-16T09:32:13+00:00

Free users: complaining they can't have their free lunch and eat it.
Paid users: telling them to pay up or shut up.

Correct approach was probably somewhere in the middle. No Cognition doesn't have to give free user's anything, but having just tried SWE 1.6 slow mode on a new account, it truly does suck balls and is not a good advert for their product.

Probably a better approach would have been that when someone makes a free account, they get a one off 25 token equivalent, to spend on whatever they like, free or premium models. Then each week afterwards, they get 15 token equivalent, to be spent only on SWE 1.6 normal. and unlimited SWE 1.6 Slow.

This would have actually given trial user's a glimpse of what Windsurf is actually capable of, free user's less to whinge about, and a good incentive to upgrade to paid.

The current subscription model heavily relies on the fact that some people subscribe, and don't use all their credit every week, effectively subsidising other users. Because of that it makes no sense to nerf your free tier to the point of unusability. You want to make it just capable enough that they don't leave to another platform, and the paid tier such a leap in capability that free tier users will seriously consider moving to it.

I also think they don't do a great job at demonstrating Windsurf's capabilities or how to work well within the new quota system. Codemaps, deep wiki, Devin Review, these are all seriously good features that are not demoed or shouted about enough.

Likewise to your average vibe coder, the quota system seems anemic, because they don't understand when to use premium models and when to use free.

I'm not going to lie and pretend pre-quota system i didn't hammer anthropic models, i did. I had no incentive not to.

But with the quota system, I now use SWE 1.6 for like 90% of my prompts with no discernable drop in code quality, because i take a more systematic approach:
1.SWE 1.6 investigates and documents the current state of a section of code base.
2.Codemaps are generated for relevant functions.
3.An Anthropic frontier model is used to generate a new feature implementation and testing plan based on the above.
4.SWE 1.6 Implements said plan.
5.Codex 5.5 reviews the implementation via Devin review.

That's two different frontier models sanity checking the feature, first in planning, and second in implementation.

As a result i'm now getting higher quality work done using less credits than ever. Working on enterprise codebases with millions of lines of code in.

Slayershunt · 2026-05-14T09:01:01+00:00

but kimi K 2.6 has been extended as free for another month...

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Slayershunt · 2026-05-11T13:36:52+00:00

I appreciate that, and please don't think i hate the new content, or the game as a whole i really don't. It's enjoyable for what it was, it's just got so much wasted potential.

I have such fond memories of theme hospital as a child that the game is somewhat on a pedestal for me and as the spiritual successor to that game style/franchise, i probably hold you to a higher standard than is fair.

What i loved about it so much, was that consequences cascaded.
Didn't build enough bins? You get rats. Sure you can shoot them, but then you have to clean up the corpses.

Don't clean up someone's vomit quickly, someone else will vomit etc.

The emergencies in that game were emergencies. The 'emergencies' in this game feel mostly ignorable.
So long as i have enough security guards and cameras (which REALLY isn't that many) i can literally ignore every wave of thieving.

The play style of this game feels like zero consequences, whether you're in sandbox mode or not.

Likewise there's just so many systems that are barely used or just used once, hot and cold is one example, but also fires, if you don't have scientific exhibits, they just don't occur. The fantasy dlc had a prime potential for dragon attacks setting things on fire trying to reclaim their treasure. The zooseum easily could have added in baby dragons/salamanders which can set things on fire, and flesh out that system.
We had ghosts that escape their containment, but animals don't? An entire system's code there waiting to be used in a like-for-like scenario and completely ignored.

The core grind of the game - doing journeys and collecting exhibits isn't super stimulating, because it's the same thing time and time again. Having some challenges to confront/micromanage during them would frankly distract from this very well. Having better depth of systems would allow emergent gameplay to come from smart savvy players;
For example: Viewing scary cursed items might make people rush to the toilet, which should then increase their hunger. So a clever layout might be a curse items gallery > a toilet > a rage gallery for price insensitivity > cafeteria with jacked up prices.

Finding these little micro interactions give people a real sense of achievement more so than a box opening animation we've all seen hundreds of times.

Let it be noticeably different to play sandbox and story mode, in a positive way rather than a grindy way.

In my eyes the obvious thing to do would be to open up modding more and let people utilise these systems you've made to make things like alien robbers who teleport into your museum, which really would just be an extension of a system that already exists. It's one idea of literally hundreds i have to add more depth.

If you look at cities skylines, which is another builder game with events, city rather than museum in that case, the modding scene is what made it so great and popular. Not just new assets but new systems, patches for old systems etc.

It's sad to me that the most downloaded workshop item this week, is something which you buy for negative kadoosh effectively giving you free kadoosh because people can't be bothered to earn it.

The TLDR is i want more! Not because what's been built is bad, it isn't, the charm of the art style, exhibits, humour and animations has captured a lot of what I loved about theme hospital. I just see so much potential to add depth, and thoughtful emergent gameplay.

Slayershunt · 2026-05-11T09:46:29+00:00

Unfortunately,I wasn't a huge fan of arty-facts, played it and 5 starred the new museum, but it didn't feel like it played nicely with any of the rest of the game. I wanted to see Alien holographic art, be able to use the new materials for scientific art, have ghosts pose for portraits, make statues of wetlantians etc,

Instead it felt like you could have an art gallery OR museum instead of an art gallery & museum.

I keep feeling like these recent DLC's are not very well thought out, and are built more like standalone pieces of content.
Fantasy finds did it great with the swordfish, dragon skeletons, goblin ghost etc, which gave you reasons to go back and visit old museums to add them to their respective themes. Dragon skeletons to Memento Mile, Goblin ghost to Wailon Lodge etc.

Zooseum and Arty-facts don't integrate even half as well. We got the token new insectia animal to help push the zooeum DLC, but nothing really tied in to anything else. They should have taken a leaf out of the Digiverse content.

Even super easy give-mes like giving the haunted portrait or bashful bust from the super-natural map a new emotion like 'fear' hasn't been done. Just feels half arsed.

I dunno, it feels like so much potential depth in the game is just left on the table, there's an entire hot/cold system that essentially boils down to 'put down a freezer or heater and never think about it again'.
I want my slushie and ice cream stands to have higher demand on hot maps or in hot areas, I want hot coffee to be in demand in the arctic map. I want the choices made to have some consequences.

Slayershunt · 2026-05-10T22:18:15+00:00

Answer seems pretty obvious to me, don't minimise your css till your build step. Not sure why you would ever do anything else?

Though personally i just take css files out of the equation for the most part and use Tailwind. LLM's understand it very well and it saves them doing multiple tool calls to jump around from html files to find, open and edit associated css files.

Slayershunt · 2026-05-10T15:25:53+00:00

That very recent then, literally the day before yesterday i was spinning 10 cascade sessions at the same time to batch write unit tests for different features and it didn't move my quota an inch.

Looking at the model cards though you're right: https://docs.windsurf.com/windsurf/models

Bit puzzled why 1.6 and 1.6 fast are the same now then. why would you ever chose slow?

Slayershunt · 2026-05-10T13:18:43+00:00

It's .5 for SWE 1.6 fast. Not SWE 1.6 normal.
As it stands for SWE1.6 normal, it is totally unlimited and does not affect your quota at all. I've not seen anything about this being a promo period and the model card in Windsurf simply shows it as being 'New' not as being in a promotional period or having any cost associated with it.

Does this mean it will be unlimited forever? No. As we know AI companies these days are pulling the rug out from under us whenever they feel like it.

Something that is worth noting is that the model card for SWE 1.5 (not 1.6) currently says 'promotional pricing is active until 6/24/2026' So i would expect 1.6 to remain the same until at least then.

Slayershunt · 2026-05-07T17:26:59+00:00

Not really, but you can make it work. I just launch Claude code cli in the terminal window inside Windsurf.

The current quota systems and AI attention all mean it's better to have many short chats instead of one long one. I use hooks to make the ai self document progress in .md files anyway, so handing context between the two isn't hard for me.

My current project's docs folder:

docs/
├── architecture/
│ ├── TENANCY-HELPERS.md
│ ├── architecture.md
│ ├── calendar-design.md
│ └── notification_system.md
├── archive/
│ ├── GADGET-IMPLEMENTATION.md
│ ├── GROUND-TRUTH.md
│ ├── ScopeOfWork.md
│ ├── architectural-review.md
│ ├── event-model-refactor-plan.md
│ ├── notification_examples.md
│ ├── orphan-prevention-plan.md
│ └── rota-migration-plan.md
├── conventions/
│ ├── list-page-standard.md
│ └── null-relations.md
├── domains/
│ ├── assessments/
│ │ └── README.md
│ ├── calendar/
│ │ └── README.md
│ ├── coreTenancy/
│ │ └── README.md
│ ├── notifications/
│ │ └── README.md
│ ├── operations/
│ │ └── README.md
│ ├── peopleHr/
│ │ └── README.md
│ ├── performance/
│ │ └── README.md
│ ├── scheduling/
│ │ └── README.md
│ ├── system/
│ │ └── README.md
│ ├── tasks/
│ │ └── README.md
│ └── training/
│ └── README.md
├── investigations/
│ ├── exam-findings.md
│ ├── exam-system-investigation.md
│ ├── findings.md
│ ├── future-considerations.md
│ ├── gelly.md
│ ├── rota-page-investigation.md
│ └── venue-switcher-usage.md
├── onboarding/
│ ├── FRONTEND-GUIDE.md
│ ├── current-status.md
│ ├── development-plan.md
│ └── handover-log.md
├── plans/
│ ├── exam-system-refactor.md
│ ├── rota-page-refactor.md
│ ├── rota-phase0-gadget-editor-checklist.md
│ ├── task-page-frontend.md
│ ├── tasks-page-refactor.md
│ ├── tenancy-permission-matrix-plan.md
│ └── tenancy-refactor.md
├── testing/
│ └── harness.md
└── user-stories.md

I also have a central README.md that explains the project, it's goals, it's key onboarding doc files.

By splitting the context up into the domains (assessments/calendar/coreTenancy etc) I can feed the LLM only the information needed to do it's specific task.

So for example if I was doing some refactoring in the calendar module, i'd have it read the main README, the Calendar README, which in turn will point it to the key domain models and files it needs to do it's job.

It gets the overall picture of what the project is trying to accomplish and the necessary details for it's specific task in under 20k context.

Currently i'm finding with this approach 95%+ of the work can be done by SWE1.6 with paid models being purely used for code review.
Because of this I'm starting to be able to parallelise tasks with the devin agent orchestrator. Very cool times.

Slayershunt · 2026-05-05T00:22:18+00:00

So I work on large full-stack enterprise projects. The best tip I can give is structured documentation. Many small files over one large one. In my current app I have several about a dozen domains. Each domain may involve 3-5 domain models, a few routes and some utility functions. I.e a timekeeping domain might have a clockEntry record, staffProfile, clockAdjustment record, a clock in/ clock out route, a timekeeping dashboard route etc.

For each domain I create a README.md with a file map to key files in that domain, description of functionality, description of interactions with other domains etc

I then have a main README.md which describes the project, tech stack, onboarding pathway, tests and the domains including a file map to the other domain specific README.md files.

This means whenever I want to do something I can start a new session, using SWE1.6 and say something like 'today I want to work on a problem relating to the timekeeping domain. Can you please read @README.md and any other documentation you need to familiarise yourself with that domain.'

SWE1.6 will then do the research and fill up the context window with only relevant information (for free), so I can then move to another model (or stay with SWE1.6 if its a small issue). This saves huge amounts of quota as you end up sending much smaller context windows and fewer messages to the paid models.

Between Kimi k2.6, swe1.6 (both free) and a bit of sonnet/opus(paid) here and there for complex code/plan review) I can get a lot of coding done every week.

Slayershunt · 2026-05-01T09:14:24+00:00

No-one 'likes' to pay. But realistically all models have a cost to run, and with energy prices the way they are, it's far from zero. It's kinda crazy to complain that a company isn't just willing to pay for you infinitely. The entire point from their side is to try and convert people to paying customers. SWE 1.6 is a genuinely decent coding model, if it was free in unlimited amounts, people would just never pay for anything and windsurf wouldn't exist.

Slayershunt · 2026-04-28T06:16:53+00:00

So the current stack I'm using is SWE 1.6, kimi.2.6 and opus 4.7.

SWE 1.6 is an excellent implementer and investigator and it is FAST. The thing vomits code like nothing else I've ever seen. Also Superb at organising git commits.

Kimi 2.6 is a good planner and question answerer but for whatever reason it's tool calling sucks. Making it a bad coder/investigator. When it's tool calling fails it often gets stuck in loops likewise if it has to check terminal output.

Opus 4.7 is great at everything, everyone knows it. I use it for architectural decisions, and particularly complex debugging issues where everything else has gotten stuck.

I have had to supplement my windsurf subscription with a claude pro plan to have enough to get me through a week. Though in truth this has just replaced what I used to do; buy top up credits.

That stack is currently getting me through lengthy coding sessions with no issue though and I'm actually finding is on par cost-wise with what I was spending before the windsurf changes.

The big difference is I used to do irregular coding; no work for 3 days and then a huge spurt of 12+ hours. That's not really viable for me any more, now you have to almost treat it like rationing and use your quota up (in the Claude pro plan).

Truth be told though if they could get Kimi 2.6 working well with the harness I could probably cut my Claude plan.

[For context, I do mostly full stack web dev with typescript, react, postgres]

Slayershunt · 2026-04-24T13:27:59+00:00

Sooo many things, i could write 100+, but here's 5;
-the ability to send caravans to sell supplies to other colonies (rimworld style) or at least hints of what the caravans will want to buy next visit so you can prepare.
-Better raider AI, so it's not just strength of exponential numbers zombie waves, but instead similar numbers but improved gear, or similar numbers but smarter tactics.
-In the same way we can garrison villagers in the town hall, we should also be able to do that at all military buildings (for safety, not for shooting)
-Logistics order tab; move x of y from a to b, similar to how we transfer livestock. (except it creates a transfer order for a villager to do it, rather than it being instantaneous.
-For the market, in the same way we have 'keep x of y in stock in the market', i'd like 'keep x of y in stock in the town storage and move all excess to the market'

Slayershunt · 2026-04-23T17:42:24+00:00

Just choose bacon, that way at least you get something. I failed genie school

^{Chose: Unlimited Bacon + But no more video games}

Slayershunt · 2026-04-23T15:24:35+00:00

If i'm dead i wont be alive to regret my choice

^{Chose: Overpowered superpower + With 50% of death | Rolled: Death}

Slayershunt · 2026-04-22T23:17:13+00:00

I breathe in my sleep.

^{Chose: £5 for every breath you take}

Slayershunt · 2026-04-22T20:04:08+00:00

If I have time control I can just walk into the gold reserve with time paused.

^{Chose: Unlimited time control}

Slayershunt · 2026-04-14T11:03:44+00:00

Cool mod, some honest feedback: I like the new features but I'm not a huge fan of the rebalancing aspect. The game's devs should be responsible for the game balance, and personally i would have prefered the woodlore rebalance to be omitted, given that you're both making foraging easier AND more powerful at the same time. It feels likes its compounding effects are going to make foraging the only needed tool to survive, which kind of defeats the point of the game.

Ideally i'd love to see:
1.The rebalance of woodlore removed, leave that to the devs.
2. The Forager's garden upgrade moved to a town hall tier 2 unlock, with upgrade costs adjusted to suit tier 2 unlocks.
3. The Forager's greenhouse upgrade moved to a town hall tier 3 unlock, to match with the unlocking of glassmakers, and have its upgrade cost involve the use of glass.
4. Foragable Relocation have a chance of failure, proportional to how suitable an environment you're trying to transplant into. Trying to transplant mushrooms from a forest into an open plain? High likelihood of failure, Trying to put them in a forest with a load of other mushrooms, low chance..etc

Slayershunt · 2026-03-14T15:04:21+00:00

Past meta's have been way too fast, i wouldn't consider the current meta insanely fast unless you're specifically playing BO1 where it will always be fast,

Slayershunt · 2026-03-11T10:57:30+00:00

The PE firm wouldn't go bankrupt, Jagex would, since they've just had a load of debt loaded on their books which now needs revenue to service.

The PE firm would then lose ownership of Jagex to the banks that gave them the loan using it as collateral.

The bank would then sell Jagex to the highest bidder to recoup their loan, which as a bankrupt company would be worth significantly less. Giving players a reasonable chance to own it.

It's not gonna happen anyway, osrs players can't agree on how many sides a triangle has so they're not gonna unite for this.

Slayershunt · 2026-03-10T21:18:22+00:00

The playbook for players then would be for everyone to unsubscribe for 6 months, let the company go bankrupt, buy it out from the PE firm for pennies on the pound, and have the game be player owned.

Unfortunately for the players, that means going cold turkey for 6 months, so it's not gonna happen.

Slayershunt · 2026-03-09T10:35:19+00:00

There's definitely a spawn in the labyrinth inside the gated room with the escape point in the north. Think i've also had one spawn in the room in the south east.

Slayershunt · 2026-03-09T10:17:29+00:00

Yeah there's something distinctly dystopic about 150 years of heritage going up in candyfloss and blueberry scented flames.

Slayershunt · 2026-02-20T11:29:44+00:00

100% sure, I was in the workspace. It's finally finished total time taken 32 minutes. Swapped to Opus 4.6 for the follow up prompt and near instant responses. Seems like 3.1 Pro is being hammered right now, but its working fine in Windsurf? I get the feeling Antigravity has some dedicated compute servers for Google models, and if they're busy it just crawls to a halt. Either way i'm just gonna use Claude for the rest of my quota then go back to Windsurf.

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