I have rewritten several things from eg. Python to Rust, Rust to Go very recently. The 400 USD is pretty arbitrary as you could rewrite several big projects pretty comfortably with the Claude ~100 USD subscription tier.

In my experience it mostly comes down to the harness (or lack of) that you use. Something like 'superpowers' can be pretty verbose and hash out things for a long time (and use a decent amount of tokens) but the output is pretty decent. The better instructions and the more brainstorming you do initially the better - as the subagents encounter fewer issues.

Without a harness you could try a direct port (prompt: 'convert x to y, don't bother me') and if the languages are roughly compatible you could get a seemingly working port much quicker but likely with major hidden issues. A comprehensive testsuite is obviously a must.

> I have rewritten several things from eg. Python to Rust, Rust to Go very recently.

What is the scale? Because I'm pretty sure it's impossible to one shot 65k LoC with "good luck, make no mistakes" prompt.

I also did this within a subscription. I counted the number of tokens afterwards and calculated the cost as if I'm paying per token. $400 is of course arbitrary, but it's a ballpark number, bun was $165000.

> In my experience it mostly comes down to the harness (or lack of) that you use.

Yep, it is.

Tokens per task is a good proxy measure of skills, 'superpowers' or any other.

Either a skill gets you the thing more efficiently (less tokens), or you don't need to redo the result afterwards (less tokens). I benchmark all my skills that way.

Models need less and less steering at this point, especially frontier ones.