Heavy AI User's Cost-Discipline Playbook

A free 2-page PDF designed to keep open on a second monitor. Nine disciplines that cut typical AI bills 30–60% without using AI less — useful whether you're spending $20 or $2,000 a month. Page 1 is the checklist; page 2 is the prompts, model-routing cheat sheet, and the 5-minute weekly audit script.

Download the PDF (free) ~8 KB · 2 pages · no email required

What's inside

Page 1

The 9 disciplines, as a checklist

  • Compress your context before pasting
  • Paste text, not screenshots
  • Kill long-running chats — start fresh
  • Default to the cheapest model that works
  • Cap output length, every time
  • Fix the prompt, don't regenerate the answer
  • Use prompt caching where supported
  • Never let an agent run unsupervised
  • Run a 5-minute weekly cost audit

Each discipline includes its dollar-impact estimate.

Page 2

Prompts + cheat sheet + audit script

  • Context-compression prompt (summarize-before-paste)
  • Summarize-then-drop prompt (for long chats)
  • Length-cap snippet (for every prompt)
  • Model-routing cheat sheet — task → which model to use
  • The 5-minute Friday-afternoon audit (5 steps)

Copy-ready. Keep open on a second monitor.

The disciplines work whether you're a heavy user with a $200 monthly bill or a free-tier user hitting your daily cap. Tokens are tokens; the math is the same. Updated quarterly.

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