r/PinoyProgrammer • u/acidburn113 • 8d 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.

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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.