In reality this is a non-issue because average chat conversations use 1/1000th the tokens of agentic coding usage (given they aren't reading their 1 million lines of generated code for every change), but at the same time... it should be a non-issue for OpenAI too. They talk about developing "intelligence too cheap to meter" and then go on to meter an absolutely trivial amount of usage for people already paying $100-$200 a month, embarrassing. The PR hit and psychological aversion to using ChatGPT this will instill in users will hurt them more than covering this usage could ever possibly do.

I say this working in an LLM startup where we serve literally unlimited usage (with the only caveat being that usage is serialized) via subscription and, unlike OpenAI, are actually profitable. I guess when you're hundreds of billions in the hole you're desperate to try anything to save the sinking ship, even if it clearly won't work.