Hey guys, Sharing something many of you probably already know—but it took me way too long to figure out (shocking, I know). When I started building apps, I used Replit because that’s what I learned on. It works… but wow, it gets expensive fast. That $25 monthly credit? Gone in hours. Then it’s death by a thousand charges—$0.70 here, $1.00 there, $4.00 over there. It adds up before you even realize what happened. If you’re deep in build mode, tweaking UI and chasing details, you can burn through hundreds of dollars just trying to make things look right—while slowly losing your hair. I went back and noticed Corbin was using Google AI Studio for the value-add parts of his app, so I figured I’d try it. And honestly? It’s great. Really great. Maybe even “why didn’t I do this sooner” great. As far as I can tell, I’m not being charged anything (famous last words), and I just spent the last 12 hours brainstorming and exploring ideas—way more output than I ever got from Replit for what it was costing me. Anyway, just sharing what’s been working for me in case it saves someone else some money… or sanity.

Hope everyone had a great week and is learning more and more. The skill of learning is something that is extremely undervalued by people. People want instant gratification, but in reality, what is more rewarding is spending hours, weeks, months, and years of your time toward a pursuit that means something more. I would also like to give a shoutout to all the people in the community reporting posts that are from bad actors and scammers. I see this and am actively banning them. Let's keep exploring together. 🏄‍♂️ BUILD! BUILD! BUILD!