Token waste, honest tool comparisons, team ROI, and the local-first case for keeping your code on your own machine.
A team case study: the waste was in tool outputs, not prompts. A local proxy fixed it — 40% lower bill, no workflow change, no code leaving the machine.
Per-seat pricing hides the real cost: API overage, context waste, and the compliance question legal will eventually ask.
Feature charts rank the wrong thing. A true TCO comparison of Copilot, Cursor, and API-direct setups — seat, overage, and context waste.
Most of your AI coding spend isn’t your prompts — it’s repeated file reads, untruncated tool output, and bloated context. Here’s the breakdown.