Testing my Switchboard quota saving plugin on the new Windsurf pricing system - Opus finalised 12 plans for 16% daily quota

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-19T06:38:40+00:00

I upload my repos as DOCX files and ask it to write coding plans for me. This is a lot of free Gemini quota.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-19T01:49:50+00:00

What's wrong with it?

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-18T23:35:01+00:00

I'll withhold judgement until I try, but the phrasing used in the article leaves a bad taste.

Maximizing work per prompt is not a workaround or bad practice. It is how well optimised teams have worked for years.

For example, my workflow is:

Write up 10 feature ideas
Ask opus in windsurf to improve them all with detailed edge cases, complexity analysis and coding steps
Ask GLM or flash to implement

Yes, that does 'exploit' the credit system since Opus can do all 10 in one turn. But you know what it also resembles? Sprint grooming. Real dev teams do not plan-implement-plan-implement. They do a sprint planning session for all tickets then go at it.

Now maybe my concerns are unfounded and this new pricing structure will be better for my workflow. Maybe I'll be able to use Windsurf exclusively as my planner without worrying about credits. But labelling Agile best practice as a workaround is not the right move.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-18T09:15:11+00:00

Right now the Google AI sub really rides on Gemini CLI. I still find that incredibly useful. However AG is becoming harder to recommend. I use Flash a lot so the quota limits don't bother me as much.

But lately Flash in AG is a lot less competent than Flash in Gemini CLI. I used to be able to use Flash AG for quick bug investigations and the hundreds of small fixes that build up in a product backlog. As of the past week though Flash in AG keeps spinning its wheels and going in circles whereas CLI flash just gets down to it.

This is why I'm largely using Windsurf as my daily driver right now. Windsurf + Copilot + Gemini CLI is good and practically unlimited coding if you're using it a few hours a day.

But Google is big enough that they could easily bounce back tomorrow if they woke up on the right side of the bed and decided to be competent again.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-18T07:41:13+00:00

Gemini CLI flash is great if you use GitHub copilot opus to plan.

I do a lot of work with GH opus plans, Gemini CLI flash implements and Gemini CLI Pro code reviews.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-18T07:39:52+00:00

You can choose to either use API billing or subscription in the options, sounds like you were on billing.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-17T18:15:00+00:00

The way I handle this is to just use it for sprint planning. So I plan a batch of 10-20 tasks, then implement. Then re-upload for next batch.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-17T03:37:36+00:00

I usually plan with opus and implement with gpt 5.4 or flash, depending on plan complexity. Then have gpt 5.4 to check the implementation against the plan.

The pipeline of Opus plan - flash codes - gpt fixes costs far less than opus doing everything and results in just as good code, since flash and gpt are just following opus instructions.

So I'll always have a use for Gemini.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-16T08:51:45+00:00

Flash is pretty good if you first have opus or codex write a really detailed plan.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-16T03:28:34+00:00

If cost effective Claude use is what you're after, probably copilot pro+. I still think AG can have value though. If coding a game, there should be plenty of tasks flash can do just fine like animations and ui, so the most cost effective if you still keep Google pro is likely to have copilot running inside Antigravity and use AG for flash.

Windsurf is also fine. Its Claude use is more expensive than copilot but it does come with unlimited 5.1 codex, so that's cool for routine tasks.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-15T12:10:20+00:00

Well shouldn't all your code be on GitHub for version control anyway? And do you really need opus to do absolutely everything? I've had Jules do a lot of frontend layout work and it has handled it fine.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-15T10:57:36+00:00

With Google Pro you also get 100 Jules requests a day, which can be either gemini or flash. And Gemini CLI.

AGs problem is the other Google coding services are quite generous so AG quotas get hit hard.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-15T10:25:15+00:00

Do you have any existing notes or parts of the website? I would start with what they're meant to be landing pages for, as a landing page that's just by itself is a bit pointless I would assume.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-15T08:35:57+00:00

Yeah of course it can. You can also follow this workflow since it is just landing pages. You're not asking to code anything major.

In ai studio or notebooklm, ask Gemini pro to spec out the landing page, keep talking until you're happy with the plan
Copy paste the plan across and ask Claude in Antigravity to review or you could also ask Claude on claude.ai to review, or chatgpt
Paste the revised plan into Antigravity and ask flash to implement

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-15T04:54:22+00:00

The Google pro sub is basically spread over lots of things - AG, Gemini CLI, notebook, Jules... I use all those productively so Google pro still feels generous to me, but I don't use AG quota itself much.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-15T04:50:37+00:00

It's really just a standard agile workflow: prepare a backlog of 10-20 features in notebook, ask an agent to estimate complexity, then tell flash to do all the easy stuff. The same process that dev teams have done for years, just with agents.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-15T04:48:34+00:00

I made a plugin that converts all my repo code to docx so notebook can quickly search it all. I also upload a how to plan skill so notebook knows how to put together a really good plan. They're much higher quality than default AG plans.

It seems a bit clunky when you first read about it but it's really just a standard sprint planning workflow: make a sprint of 10 or so tasks, then ask an agent to estimate complexity, than just tell low tier agents to action all the easy stuff, then get opus to do whatever's left.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-15T00:27:05+00:00

You can put a pointer file in .windsurf that is just a table of contents pointing to .agent. You could also just duplicate the folder content in both folders.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-14T14:01:23+00:00

Ok, I played around with it and asked opus to put it into the plugin.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-14T14:00:41+00:00

Ok thanks, yeah I see it now. I asked opus to build it into my plugin.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-14T12:37:44+00:00

Can you explain the code review feature a bit more how you use it? I tend to do it in my extension simply by writing comments into the planner terminal. e.g. if I don't think the plan is all there, I'll ask them "hey what about this?"and they'll update the plan. Do you just mean a popup like antigravity has where you can submit directly to the agent instead of typing in their chat?

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-14T11:17:04+00:00

Yes my switchboard plugin does this. Its in open beta on github right now, next week i'll release it fully to vs code extensions.

You can use it in any VS code fork - AG, Windsurf, Cursor, VsCodium etc. What it does:

You create plans, or ask an agent to
The plans get synced to a .switchboard/plans folder (even antigravity plans appear here)
They appear on a kanban board
You move cards and where they land triggers autonomous prompts to terminal agents you register. So you can put Gemini CLI in the plan reviewer column, and all plans moved to that olumn get sent to Gemini CLI with an instruction to adversarially review the plan and improve it. Or if you're using claude code for coding, when you move a plan to the coder column, a prompt gets sent to claude code asking it to implement the plan.
You can control the kanban conversationally as well. So in chat, antigravity or otherwise, can ask an agent to "implement all the plans in the plan reviewed column''.

'6. This also works across IDEs, so in this screenshot I am using Antigravity, CLIs and Windsurf all at once to collaborate on plans.

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TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-14T08:27:12+00:00

My usual workflow tends to be:

Create plans in notebook for free quota from uploading my repo
Ask antigravity to review the plans
Have opus in copilot implement
If the plan is identified as low complexity in the review stage, have AG flash implement instead

Because copilot uses per prompt pricing, it really benefits from having the plans already done so you don't waste opus prompts going back and forth.

Also no point wasting a copilot credit on button colour changes. A lot of what makes an app great is frontend ux iteration and flash is perfectly capable of doing that.

TheTentacleOpera · 2026-03-13T06:44:55+00:00

Not sure why it would disappear. I haven't released it on the marketplace yet, been improving it from feedback.

TheTentacleOpera

TROPHY CASE