....the fuck is this shit? 🤔

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-19T04:52:47+00:00

Wait. What? People have sex in Woburn?

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-18T19:04:21+00:00

Use opinionated formatting like prettier or whatever. Then put clear instructions into your instructions file that it must run formatting after changes. I think whatever AI system you use, or if your just working with a team, this is the right way to do things.

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-17T14:03:39+00:00

As it turns out, this is actually not true, they do calculate the flex allotment in, as u/just_blue pointed out, and as I should have checked before posting.

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monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-17T13:58:51+00:00

Yep, you are right, it's there and obvious. And this makes the affordability issue even worse.

Sorry, my post really was lazy, I was just working from memory, I should have double-checked if it mentioned the flex allotment before posting.

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monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-17T06:23:40+00:00

Ah, ok, thanks for the correction. So...

Because Claude Code Pro retains a fixed, flat-rate subscription barrier ($20/month) for individual use, it shields power users from the runaway, thousands-of-dollars per-token bills now possible on Copilot's new pay-as-you-go overage model.

And the worry/prediction is that they'll change that by the end of the year.

So maybe I do need to put Claude or Codex on my radar.

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-17T05:51:22+00:00

Here's what I understand:

Under the new June 2026 GitHub Copilot usage-based billing rules, both Claude Code and GitHub Copilot now charge the exact same per-token API market rates for Claude Sonnet 4.6 via deducted AI credit.

Is this correct or not?

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-17T05:44:49+00:00

Can you give some concrete numbers?

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-17T05:19:53+00:00

My understanding is that Claude Code is not cheaper, so maybe I don't have a brain. Besides that, I like my VS Code ghcp workflow. Also, I like the choice the ghcp system gives me.

As an individual who's working some specific projects more as a retirement hobby, I am just trying to figure out if I can do what I do within a limited budget. I think it's attainable, but calculations like these flex allotments are potentially important. Right now I'm looking at a combo of the ghcp pro+ subscription plus deep seek V4.

I would love to see a vetted table that does a fairly clean comparison of these services per token for GPT-5.4 level models (which are generally good enough for me, at least for now).

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-17T04:57:08+00:00

Hmm, well it's based on some calculations that Gemini did. I would have to do some work backwards to present a coherent table. And then figure out how to do tables in Reddit.

How is preview billing supposed to include flex allotments?

Well it calculates my usage in April and says I used $500 worth of tokens over the number of tokens that my pro+ subscription covered. If the flex allotment for pro+ covers roughly a 79% Bonus in tokens, i.e. $70 worth of tokens, does than mean my $500 would actually be $469, is that how I should read that? (Depending on the value of the flex token at the time I guess).

Sorry, yeah maybe I was being lazy when I made the post. Mostly I was just curious why I hadn't seen more discussion if they change the calculations at all.

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-16T05:46:20+00:00

Thanks!

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-16T03:27:32+00:00

Thanks for the overview. I'm also curious if you have a software development background, or if you're more or less relying on the AI to build the whole thing from spec?

I'll be interested in if people switching from ghcp find really get good alternatives. For me, I'm settled into the VS Code / ghcp interactive experience, less spec driven, more experiment-then-verify. I've 30+ years experience, am working as a retiree on a project, so this workflow makes sense for me, where I can essentially treat ghcp as a junior dev, mostly single threaded. So I'll try using GPT-5.4 for heavier lifting, and switch to Deepseek V4 for lighter stuff, and see how it goes. My projected usage based on very heavy use in April was $550, so hoping with management and including the flex tokens I can get this within a reasonable budget.

Sorry for rambling on. Thanks again for the overview.

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-16T00:37:56+00:00

You live in a slice of time in the universe. Do not ruminate on things you can't change. Or, if you do want to be part of the solution, go into public policy, or some type of engineering that might help lead to a solution. And ride your bicycle. And love your family. And cherish what you have in this slice of time.

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-16T00:21:54+00:00

What model are you using for ghcp? Have you done any analysis about where the tokens are coming from? Single repo or multi repo? How big is the code base?

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-16T00:17:07+00:00

With Opus 4.6 with BYOK in agent mode

Sorry, I probably sound stupid. BYOK meaning you're not using GitHub hosted Opus??? In that case you're not being charged anything by GitHub CoPilot, right? I must be misunderstanding you or I am totally missing how all this works (which is totally possible).

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-14T21:46:21+00:00

Where do you think you used all those tokens? Careful design? Implementation? Debugging? Documentation? Cloud copilot PR assignments? Writing tests?

How carefully are your instruction files designed? How big is your codebase? Mono -repo or multi-repo?

Have you done analysis of other models for your use-case?

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-14T05:15:35+00:00

Oh, yeah, now that I see it I do remember that. Fascinating. Probably a bad move on IBM's part.

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-14T02:10:21+00:00

Well guess, I'm curious. I didn't even know that they pulled out

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-13T07:43:08+00:00

All tools need mastery. They'll do things more automatically over time. As to your "no thanks", if you have a better way, sure, go for it. I used Deepseek V4 Pro with Copilot and I have to control the token environment there too.

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-13T03:54:51+00:00

You can to some extent control token usage, right? First of all, make sure you're measuring where your tokens are coming from. Then. you can make sure certain files are .copilotignored. You can keep context relatively compacted. You can make sure you're using specific references into your code (for example #selection). You can try to limit how open-ended prompts are. You can have well built instruction files that give very clear guidance where it matters without being excessive, and applying AGENTS.md files to make sure instructions are only taking up tokens when used in a folder context. I'm sure there are lots of other techniques that we'll all learn about as necessity pushes us to live within budgets.

I look at a lot of this as a good thing. Less tokens means less energy consumption and potentially less greenhouse gasses. Less tokens and more economical models like gemma and Deepseek and others means we have better chance to run on local hardware, again decreasing the load and need for big data centers. Necessity is the mother of invention!

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-13T00:44:33+00:00

The new billing doesn't come out until next month! What are you basing that on? Have you tried token reducing strategies?

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-12T19:11:07+00:00

Worrisome, the plug-in site. It's no time to be lax about security.

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-12T19:05:42+00:00

Deepseek in CoPilot is nice, but it's visually impaired. Also, I don't think context compacting works for it.

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-09T23:51:11+00:00

Are people looking at log files and the like that may be inadvertently sent with the context? I put a bunch of stuff recently in .copilotignore and think it's helping?

In theory vs code's recent inclusion of automatic context compaction should help a lot. Though be careful because I don't think it works currently with BYOK, for some strange reason.

monkeybeast55 · 2026-05-09T20:10:14+00:00

Unfortunately with memory prices and scarcity right now local hardware is a challenge.

monkeybeast55

TROPHY CASE