AI makes building cheaper, but running costs hide in tokens, free tiers and hours that are easy to miscount. This thread runs from Launchling, where I never had a reliable figure for what a plan cost, to Fold's ledgers, where every figure says how sure it is.
Seeing the cost
When is a cheaper model the better product decision?
inference cost · unit economics · token budgets · model selection
Start here: A recipe for honest pictures: how to avoid AI image slop without copyright trouble
Builds
- EXP-009Building
Mullo
The best page, the worse journey: when an AI tool's quality isn't worth the effort
An AI that draws my notes as an illustrated page. Against a general-purpose tool it made the better page but took far more effort, so I'm redesigning it around what only it does.
- EXP-005Building · Pilot
Fold
Cheap to build, hard to stop: when AI builds faster than you can learn
A recipe app for vegetarian households with a vegan at the table, built for my own family's needs; once I saw its wider potential, I added a fair amount of complexity without checking whether it was warranted.
- EXP-004Live
emilysas.com
The bottleneck moved: where the time goes when an AI agent writes the code
A Claude agent wrote my professional site in about 42 hours, from first commit to the last launch change. The time went on accounts, decisions only I could make, and testing in production.
- EXP-001Retired
emilybuilds on Notion + Super
Deciding not to build: when no-code is the right call, and when it stops being one
In 2025 I published emilybuilds.ai on Notion and Super.so to start writing sooner; it was live within days, and the complexity moved somewhere I had less control over.
- EXP-002Retired
Launchling
All tests passing: when checking an AI product outgrows the product
An AI tool that turned a founder's rough idea into a plan. The product ran end to end; the evaluation I built to check it grew until it couldn't finish a run.
Notes
- A recipe for honest pictures: how to avoid AI image slop without copyright troubleinference cost · unit economics · token budgetsNote
- Building My AI Product Portfolio Site with Notion + Superproduct discovery · problem framing · build vs buy2025 post