The Hidden Cost of Building Your Side Project with AI

Nobody told me that building a side project with AI assistance would come with its own billing problem. I mean, I knew I'd be paying for API calls. That was obvious. But I had no idea how fast it adds up when you're deep in a build session, iterating on the same feature ten different ways, and Claude is right there, infinitely patient, never telling you "hey, you've already spent $12 today." I found out the hard way. The build that got expensive I was working o