Tokens are gas
Fable 5, point 1, point 2, another Opus just for you. Luna Terra Sol, gimme Kimi and take control. Carbon, Argon, Astra, faster, DeepSeek cheaper, benchmark master.
Back in February, in Castles in the Sandbox, I compared agentic coding tools (or the tokens supplied to power them) to wine labels. I was being generous. People at least drink the wine.
The code still writes itself, there are still bugs, and the tests still pass without testing anything useful. The improvements are incremental when we're using them, even when the benchmark charts make them look exponential.[1]
Very few people buy tokens for the pleasure of having tokens (coin collectors and Scrooge McDuck aside). We buy them through subscriptions or credits to write some code, fill out some forms, or generate uncanny images.
I was debating the gasoline comparison at the time, and I'm more convinced than ever that it's the right one. Tokens are gasoline. We want to fuel the car. I personally don't care where the fuel comes from, as long as the thing it's coming out of looks like a pump at a gas station and it's cheaper than the one across the street.
People still have a favorite station, though. Wawa has a rewards card, Exxon has Rewards+, and Costco makes cheaper fuel part of the reason to buy a membership.[2] The cheaper station doesn't automatically win (for everyone).[3], [4]
Anthropic gave eligible existing Pro subscribers $100 in bonus credit and Max subscribers $250 to use Claude Code for coding tasks on its servers.[5] OpenAI offers some Codex users a free reset when they reach their usage limit, so they can keep using it.[6]
If I run out of credits on one and another is giving them away, of course I am going to use it. If it does the same thing for less, I do not care which next token predictor it is coming from.
Sources
- Claude Fable 5.2; Claude Opus 5.5 and its comparison with Fable 5.1; OpenAI model catalogue; Gemini models; Kimi K3.1 Pro. Model names and availability are distinct from the author's assessment of daily usefulness; the exponential comparison describes how the charts look, not a measured growth rate.
- Wawa Mastercard announcement; Exxon Mobil Rewards+; Costco fuel FAQ. Costco also permits nonmembers using prepaid Shop Cards.
- NACS, NATSO and SIGMA comments to the EPA, February 2023, page 5, footnote 3. Citing the 2022 NACS survey: 69% said price was the most important factor in choosing where to buy gas, and 64% said they would detour five minutes to save five cents per gallon. This document preserves those figures from the now-unavailable article “How the Pandemic Reshaped Fueling.”
- NACS, A Good Experience Tops Price, March 28, 2022. 74% said they would detour five minutes for a preferred store; 64% would do so to save five cents per gallon. These are stated intentions, not measured trips or evidence of why particular respondents preferred a store.
- Claude Code cloud-session promotion. Eligible individual subscribers active at the September 23, 2026 start; claim deadline October 7, expiry November 4. The credits applied to cloud sessions and are now expired.
- Codex reset policy. Free resets are discretionary and available to selected accounts; paid resets are separate. The Dots enterprise preview and billing terms describe a separate enterprise offer, omitted from the main comparison.
- Additional pricing examples retained for reference: Muse subscriptions offer a free allowance, then $20 or $100 monthly plans; US Gemini subscriptions start at $0, $4.99, $19.99, and $99.99 and up. Prices checked November 9, 2026; eligibility and availability vary. Paid tiers include different usage limits, models and features.