How to manage API rate limits and token costs during hypergrowth
When your AI product suddenly scales from hundreds to thousands of users, token consumption becomes an existential constraint—not a cost optimization problem. Kent Beck argues that expansion-stage growth demands a mental shift: abandon the careful, reversible decisions of exploration and treat token capacity like ammunition in wartime. Your job is pushing bottlenecks into the future through rapid, imperfect solutions—multiple API accounts, aggressive caching, feature deletion—not elegant architecture.
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