What I read on social media about people and these resets gives off literal worst kind of addiction vibes. I've literally seen people talking about "Oh I had an existential crisis without Fable/GPT-5.6"
These people legitimately need help, or alternatively a social life.
Maybe its different on my end because I just use a sub outside of work for fun stuff. At work its not my money so I don't really care. I go to work, maybe use these subs at home every once in a while for a fun personal project and if I hit the limits (I rarely even do) I play video games or hang out with my wife/family.
People are borderline tying their identities to these models it seems, and yet most people aren't even building anything interesting.
Yes, 100%. The author seems to be describing, quite lucidly, how he is getting sucked into a gambling-like addiction to these LLMs… although he seems unaware of the implications of that.
Yeah I've been noticing for a while. Definitely didn't want to be one of the first to bring it up! Few weeks ago it was really unexpected resets the day before the actually reset. Now I'm noticing Claude keeps going for a while after the 7 day quota hits 100% (I setup my statusline to include quota as I got tired of checking the app), but also it could just be bad calibration and even at 100% I still actually have quota left.
If I had to guess uncharitably, I’d say they want you to feel like you keep getting something extra for “free” while you’re getting the same service you should have expected as normal 3 months ago.
I think this is because they're having trouble with capacity planning. They plan conservatively, and they have extra capacity that's going unused. But they don't want to commit to anything, in case usage spikes.
This article reads like a description of gambling-addiction behavior; the author appears to be addicted to using LLMs.
He's eagerly awaiting his next hit of dopamine from his favorite model. He's setting timers to be ready for when his next hit comes available. He's spinning up unnecessary queries just to start the timer ticking on new models.
You could basically write the same article about some guy who sits in a casino all day eagerly awaiting double-your-winnings bonuses or similar.
> He's spinning up unnecessary queries just to start the timer ticking on new models.
This one just makes sense though. If you have a body of work to do that you know will exceed your 5 hour limit, then sending a message 3 hours before you start so that the reset happens in the middle enables you to do a task in one sitting.
Gambling addition implies dopamine hits from irregular and uncertain outcomes: as I note in the post, I don't get a dopamine hit from running agents. I know people say "LLMs are just gambling because they're next-token-maximizers that can't write real code" but with GPT 5.6 Sol (and a few new tricks I discovered) the outputs are much less irregular and uncertain. It's just typical engineering.
"Not wanting to waste money" is the polar opposite of gambling.
> Gambling addition implies dopamine hits from irregular and uncertain outcomes
Your post literally describes your fascination with trying to figure out the pattern of a "random" reward that you get, and trying to maximize the value you get out of it.
I put "random" in scare quotes because I strongly believe that—just as slot machine payouts are carefully structured to keep you playing—these LLM resets are structured to keep heavy users like you coming back to max out their usage, and to progressively upgrade it.
Several other commenters have also stated this same suspicion about the pattern of resets you're describing.
> "Not wanting to waste money" is the polar opposite of gambling.
From everything I've read about gambling addiction, particularly Jay Caspian Kang, that seems wrong.
The desire to "not waste money" and "get back to even" seems like a huge part of what motivates gamblers to keep gambling.
Logically, gambling is like going to the movies. You expect to pay x currency for y value of entertainment. If y falls short of expectations you might feel like you wasted your money, but who becomes addicted to going to the movies to try to get even? There is probably someone who has, but I’ve never heard of it and it doesn’t seem to be common; not like gambling addictions. For all intents and purposes it doesn’t happen.
But gambling addictions do happen, fairly regularly. Perhaps it is loss aversion coupled with the aforementioned dopamine hit associated with gambling that makes it so prevalent?
For the problems I work on with GPT 5.6 Sol and the checks and balances I have in place, I estimate:
- 80% of prompts get everything correct and are confirmed correct with manual validation
- 19% of prompts make a minor mistake based on an ambiguity of the original prompt (user error not LLM error), but then reliably fixed in a followup prompt
- 1% of prompts causes more problems than it solves and is more pragmatic to just revert
For 99% good output, there isn't much of a dopamine rush when there is good output. The dopamine rushes are for the <1% odds.
From the other replies on this post, I suspect no one believes me, but I am offering these numbers in good faith.
I think those of us who are using AI consistently believe you and understand. I'd say roughly the same thing about Claude in terms of numbers.
I think many people who don't believe you just haven't built-up the kind of prompt history & MCP / CLI tooling etc that lets you get to the point where things work at that level of accuracy.
Hope it helps to know that at least some of us here understand and are seeing the same thing. And if it's anything like my experience with Fable, "always be more ambitious". The capabilities of the models are often limited only by what you're brave enough to ask for. I keep finding I'm not ambitious enough.
Respectfully, a lot of what you're saying in this thread sounds a lot like the lies that gamblers tell themselves. Saying this as someone with a strong tendency towards addictions.
Some of these things are only possible to really see in hindsight. Yes, you've been working on these things for a while, but these systems are notably different in their capacity and strings they pull on us.
Every single prompt worked without issue, and it got most of the way on the first try with the initial prompt (+ a couple visibility bugs due to the agent not having Computer Vision to see said menu bar app) such as:
> Create a SwiftUI menu bar app named `swiftmote` using theto create the most user friendly app following Apple's HID guidelines for creating a remote that can operate a Apple TV on a local network. Instead of reimplementing the protocols needs to interface with an Apple TV, use the Python package `pyatv` and host it within the SwiftUI app as a sidecar along with a Python installation.
I have my own Apple TV I can manually verify that it worked as expected, which is notable because the agent can't test or lie about this pipeline because it does not have access to the Apple TV.
That is not hallucination or psychosis. If you want, I can release all the prompts I used. (EDIT: Sure, why not, here are the prompts. If I don't complain about something in a followup prompt, assume it worked correctly: https://gist.github.com/minimaxir/30fa820daa1392da13026ec6aa... )
Addiction is about negative impact on your private and professional life and the life of those around you and doing things about your will or things you know are bad for you.
Might be the case here, but just setting a timer and being generally hyped about something is not enough for that.
Very weird how convinced some here seem to be that addiction is involved while they apparently don't know anything about the diagnosis criteria.
I think it is because the plans are crazy expensive. when you pay 200-300$/month for an online subscription, its normal to want to extract as much value as possible.
I have a subscription. If I don't have anything to do at the moment I don't use it. I don't think I need to set a timer every five hours and come up with tasks to do just to use my subscription. Seems like odd behavior?
I also have a Netflix subscription. I watch a couple of things on it and stop. I don't think to myself I need to maximize my subscription so let me watch movies all the time and wake up at 2 AM to make sure the next movie starts.
> it's just insanely irritating to work with a tool that 1) limits its' own use 2) with a random interval.
Do you understand how the psychological response to the "random" disappearance of an annoyance is pretty much exactly the same as the psychological response to the "random" appearance of a reward?
I put "random" in square quotes because neither are in fact totally random, but both are clearly quite carefully engineered to provoke the desired response.
> you're projecting
I am not projecting. My total lifetime gambling consists of maybe 10 or 15 cash poker games with high school friends, ten minutes at a casino in Montréal which I found a revolting experience, and receiving a few $1 scratch lottery tickets as party favors.
How does that mean you're not projecting? Yes if you oversimplify an LLM's responses to be random, and you squint real hard, it kinda resembles gambling, but an essay's worth of words is more meaningful to a human reading them than a human pulling a lever on a slot machine hoping for three sets of three cherries.
Oh this is a good idea actually, that reset checker site allows for setting up a scheduled agent job, so that GPT alerts me when there's been a reset :)
Competition. If Anthropic had followed through on their plan to put Fable under API pricing, users would have jumped ship en masse to GPT 5.6 (or perhaps to K3 if it turns out to be good enough.)
My understanding is that they are no longer threatening to do it, it's part of the Max plan now (which I use.) The $20/month subscribers might still have to pay as they go, though.
I hope so! In the model selector in claude code in the browser it still says "Available until July 19" next to Fable. Also on Friday I did get an error while using Fable that said something like "This model requires API credits to use" but that disappeared after about 20 minutes....
It feels like Anthropic was affected by resource limitations upon launch or big adoption curves in the past, and now they're tyring to be mindful of having less of those, in several ways, one of which is trying to keep capacity to keep core services running and let the high demand not impact the rest of the system.
WHen it doesn't turn out that way, it opens up options.
At the same time if other model providers were anticipating Anthropic or someone else to have problems at launch, and were waiting in the wings with their own models to launch competitively, it sets off a capacity release competition.
One might lower prices, one might give it away, or just make it available, and then there are users on other platforms with limits, or free until a certain day, etc.
They're giving everyone their next hit.
What I read on social media about people and these resets gives off literal worst kind of addiction vibes. I've literally seen people talking about "Oh I had an existential crisis without Fable/GPT-5.6"
These people legitimately need help, or alternatively a social life.
Maybe its different on my end because I just use a sub outside of work for fun stuff. At work its not my money so I don't really care. I go to work, maybe use these subs at home every once in a while for a fun personal project and if I hit the limits (I rarely even do) I play video games or hang out with my wife/family.
People are borderline tying their identities to these models it seems, and yet most people aren't even building anything interesting.
> They're giving everyone their next hit.
Yes, 100%. The author seems to be describing, quite lucidly, how he is getting sucked into a gambling-like addiction to these LLMs… although he seems unaware of the implications of that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48961596
My guess is they are getting folks used to the idea of:
1. The end of unlimited token subsidization and a new status quo of metered usage limits.
2. Adding to the above, self-initiated usage limit resets give you some control and again help lessen the sting of the end of subsidization.
Right now though, I think Anthropic and OpenAI are in open MAU war ahead of their respective IPOs and that might be a bigger factor.
Read: AI companies found a way to make AI chatbot to look less expensive driving people to become more addicted to it.
Yeah I've been noticing for a while. Definitely didn't want to be one of the first to bring it up! Few weeks ago it was really unexpected resets the day before the actually reset. Now I'm noticing Claude keeps going for a while after the 7 day quota hits 100% (I setup my statusline to include quota as I got tired of checking the app), but also it could just be bad calibration and even at 100% I still actually have quota left.
If I had to guess uncharitably, I’d say they want you to feel like you keep getting something extra for “free” while you’re getting the same service you should have expected as normal 3 months ago.
I think this is because they're having trouble with capacity planning. They plan conservatively, and they have extra capacity that's going unused. But they don't want to commit to anything, in case usage spikes.
Push down official on paper limits while limiting real world backlash by artificially inflating real world usage above paper limits with resets.
This is the result of a forgotten phenomenon called "competition".
This article reads like a description of gambling-addiction behavior; the author appears to be addicted to using LLMs.
He's eagerly awaiting his next hit of dopamine from his favorite model. He's setting timers to be ready for when his next hit comes available. He's spinning up unnecessary queries just to start the timer ticking on new models.
You could basically write the same article about some guy who sits in a casino all day eagerly awaiting double-your-winnings bonuses or similar.
> He's spinning up unnecessary queries just to start the timer ticking on new models.
This one just makes sense though. If you have a body of work to do that you know will exceed your 5 hour limit, then sending a message 3 hours before you start so that the reset happens in the middle enables you to do a task in one sitting.
Gambling addition implies dopamine hits from irregular and uncertain outcomes: as I note in the post, I don't get a dopamine hit from running agents. I know people say "LLMs are just gambling because they're next-token-maximizers that can't write real code" but with GPT 5.6 Sol (and a few new tricks I discovered) the outputs are much less irregular and uncertain. It's just typical engineering.
"Not wanting to waste money" is the polar opposite of gambling.
> Gambling addition implies dopamine hits from irregular and uncertain outcomes
Your post literally describes your fascination with trying to figure out the pattern of a "random" reward that you get, and trying to maximize the value you get out of it.
I put "random" in scare quotes because I strongly believe that—just as slot machine payouts are carefully structured to keep you playing—these LLM resets are structured to keep heavy users like you coming back to max out their usage, and to progressively upgrade it.
Several other commenters have also stated this same suspicion about the pattern of resets you're describing.
> "Not wanting to waste money" is the polar opposite of gambling.
From everything I've read about gambling addiction, particularly Jay Caspian Kang, that seems wrong.
The desire to "not waste money" and "get back to even" seems like a huge part of what motivates gamblers to keep gambling.
>The desire to "not waste money" and "get back to even" seems like a huge part of what motivates gamblers to keep gambling.
As someone who had family members go through gambling addiction this is the primary mechanism behind it.
Addicts don't see it as "cool fun dopamine kicks" but instead find it the only way they can get back to normal/where they are supposed to be
Don’t worry, they have a system, they can’t lose, and honestly, it’s like the outcome is almost guaranteed.
That seems like an incomplete explanation.
Logically, gambling is like going to the movies. You expect to pay x currency for y value of entertainment. If y falls short of expectations you might feel like you wasted your money, but who becomes addicted to going to the movies to try to get even? There is probably someone who has, but I’ve never heard of it and it doesn’t seem to be common; not like gambling addictions. For all intents and purposes it doesn’t happen.
But gambling addictions do happen, fairly regularly. Perhaps it is loss aversion coupled with the aforementioned dopamine hit associated with gambling that makes it so prevalent?
> dopamine hits from irregular and uncertain outcomes
Like the LLM getting the solution right?
For the problems I work on with GPT 5.6 Sol and the checks and balances I have in place, I estimate:
- 80% of prompts get everything correct and are confirmed correct with manual validation
- 19% of prompts make a minor mistake based on an ambiguity of the original prompt (user error not LLM error), but then reliably fixed in a followup prompt
- 1% of prompts causes more problems than it solves and is more pragmatic to just revert
For 99% good output, there isn't much of a dopamine rush when there is good output. The dopamine rushes are for the <1% odds.
From the other replies on this post, I suspect no one believes me, but I am offering these numbers in good faith.
I think those of us who are using AI consistently believe you and understand. I'd say roughly the same thing about Claude in terms of numbers.
I think many people who don't believe you just haven't built-up the kind of prompt history & MCP / CLI tooling etc that lets you get to the point where things work at that level of accuracy.
Hope it helps to know that at least some of us here understand and are seeing the same thing. And if it's anything like my experience with Fable, "always be more ambitious". The capabilities of the models are often limited only by what you're brave enough to ask for. I keep finding I'm not ambitious enough.
> and a few new tricks I discovered
This right here. Any gambler would recognize that statement.
Said tricks improve the output in an objective measurable manner, not theoretical, vibes, or gambler's fallacy. (blog post forthcoming on that)
I've been researching LLM prompt optimization for longer than ChatGPT has existed; I was successfully optimizing the output of GPT-2 back in 2019.
Respectfully, a lot of what you're saying in this thread sounds a lot like the lies that gamblers tell themselves. Saying this as someone with a strong tendency towards addictions.
Some of these things are only possible to really see in hindsight. Yes, you've been working on these things for a while, but these systems are notably different in their capacity and strings they pull on us.
Be well, please.
Yesterday (unrelated to quotamaxxing described in the article), I made an Apple TV macOS menu bar remote app: https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:oxaerni...
Every single prompt worked without issue, and it got most of the way on the first try with the initial prompt (+ a couple visibility bugs due to the agent not having Computer Vision to see said menu bar app) such as:
> Create a SwiftUI menu bar app named `swiftmote` using theto create the most user friendly app following Apple's HID guidelines for creating a remote that can operate a Apple TV on a local network. Instead of reimplementing the protocols needs to interface with an Apple TV, use the Python package `pyatv` and host it within the SwiftUI app as a sidecar along with a Python installation.
I have my own Apple TV I can manually verify that it worked as expected, which is notable because the agent can't test or lie about this pipeline because it does not have access to the Apple TV.
That is not hallucination or psychosis. If you want, I can release all the prompts I used. (EDIT: Sure, why not, here are the prompts. If I don't complain about something in a followup prompt, assume it worked correctly: https://gist.github.com/minimaxir/30fa820daa1392da13026ec6aa... )
Addiction is about negative impact on your private and professional life and the life of those around you and doing things about your will or things you know are bad for you.
Might be the case here, but just setting a timer and being generally hyped about something is not enough for that.
Very weird how convinced some here seem to be that addiction is involved while they apparently don't know anything about the diagnosis criteria.
Ironically my time and focus on agentic prompting and coding has helped me break an actual bad addiction (World of Warcraft)
I think it is because the plans are crazy expensive. when you pay 200-300$/month for an online subscription, its normal to want to extract as much value as possible.
No it’s definitely addiction
> This article reads like a description of gambling-addiction behavior; the author appears to be addicted to using LLMs.
you're projecting, it's just insanely irritating to work with a tool that 1) limits its' own use 2) with a random interval.
keeping in mind that plenty of people are making money on token use..
this guy sets a timer to wake up for work; he appears to be addicted to work.
If you don’t want 1 or 2 then pay by the token. If that’s too expensive for you then now you know why 1 and 2 exist.
That's fine, but that doesn't mean that people taking steps to get the most out of what they have with 1 and 2 are now somehow gamblers.
I have a subscription. If I don't have anything to do at the moment I don't use it. I don't think I need to set a timer every five hours and come up with tasks to do just to use my subscription. Seems like odd behavior?
I also have a Netflix subscription. I watch a couple of things on it and stop. I don't think to myself I need to maximize my subscription so let me watch movies all the time and wake up at 2 AM to make sure the next movie starts.
I encourage you others to keep on minimizing so us others can keep in maximizing. Balance!
> it's just insanely irritating to work with a tool that 1) limits its' own use 2) with a random interval.
Do you understand how the psychological response to the "random" disappearance of an annoyance is pretty much exactly the same as the psychological response to the "random" appearance of a reward?
I put "random" in square quotes because neither are in fact totally random, but both are clearly quite carefully engineered to provoke the desired response.
> you're projecting
I am not projecting. My total lifetime gambling consists of maybe 10 or 15 cash poker games with high school friends, ten minutes at a casino in Montréal which I found a revolting experience, and receiving a few $1 scratch lottery tickets as party favors.
How does that mean you're not projecting? Yes if you oversimplify an LLM's responses to be random, and you squint real hard, it kinda resembles gambling, but an essay's worth of words is more meaningful to a human reading them than a human pulling a lever on a slot machine hoping for three sets of three cherries.
Oh this is a good idea actually, that reset checker site allows for setting up a scheduled agent job, so that GPT alerts me when there's been a reset :)
Operant conditioning random reinforcement is a pretty well researched science
That explains it! I was wondering about this just today as I saw it hd reset. Alas I don't need to wait another 7 days..
Ive typed out several things, none of them really capture succinctly the level of disdain I have for people that this article is describing.
I cannot fathom the idea that one is warping their work on a given engineering problem around the availability of a magic next token predictor box.
Competition. If Anthropic had followed through on their plan to put Fable under API pricing, users would have jumped ship en masse to GPT 5.6 (or perhaps to K3 if it turns out to be good enough.)
Theoretically it'll still happen tomorrow. But we'll see--I think they've extended it twice?
Anthropic gave up. A $200 Max sub now gets you access to Fable 5.
Anthropic's game is over.
My understanding is that they are no longer threatening to do it, it's part of the Max plan now (which I use.) The $20/month subscribers might still have to pay as they go, though.
I hope so! In the model selector in claude code in the browser it still says "Available until July 19" next to Fable. Also on Friday I did get an error while using Fable that said something like "This model requires API credits to use" but that disappeared after about 20 minutes....
I like money.
It feels like Anthropic was affected by resource limitations upon launch or big adoption curves in the past, and now they're tyring to be mindful of having less of those, in several ways, one of which is trying to keep capacity to keep core services running and let the high demand not impact the rest of the system.
WHen it doesn't turn out that way, it opens up options.
At the same time if other model providers were anticipating Anthropic or someone else to have problems at launch, and were waiting in the wings with their own models to launch competitively, it sets off a capacity release competition.
One might lower prices, one might give it away, or just make it available, and then there are users on other platforms with limits, or free until a certain day, etc.
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