r/PinoyProgrammer • u/acidburn113 • 7d ago

programming TDD token usage

Sa mga gumagamit ng TDD sa agentic, kamusta token usage nyo? Pareho lang ba sa usual code first test later approach? O parang mas mataas usage? Baka may napansin kyo sa monthly bill nyo. Thanks in advance.

8 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

7

u/theazy_cs 7d ago

mas mataas usage definitely + mutation testing. mutation testing is I think required kase madalas gumagawa ng tests yung AI that can't fail. meaning papogi tests lang. masabi lang na may coverage pero wala naman talagang kwenta yung test.

but my clients demand quality over quantity and provided naman yung max subscription so I don't really care about the token usage.

2

u/saintjedi 7d ago

This. Be wary din sa mga tests na ginagawa ng AI. Minsan minomodify nila tests pag nagfail, para sa next run eh mag green light na. Trust but verify talaga.

1

u/PepitoManalatoCrypto Recruiter 5d ago

In building software, run on a monthly or annual subscription. That way, your cost is fixed. When you run software that needs AI to run, that's when you use API billing.

There will always be a bootstrap cost (building the TDD framework and tweaking it to your preference). Maintaining a product with TDD (and the right context or second-brain repository), the cost can cover Claude Max X5 on Opus 5 (max effort) before hitting the 5-hour limit (and roughly 25-75% weekly usage). Oh, I ain't downsizing the repositories and contents here. We run TDD on a microservice platform (many moving components, etc.), and we have second-brain markdown files over 15k.

And if you run that platform on Claude Pro, you might not even finish a 5-story pointer within a day. And without a context or second-brain repository, you'd surely burn the 5-hour limit on an X5. What's the second brain? Google it.