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Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

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Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#81

Post by CamperBob2 »

stanac wrote: post #16
zkmon wrote: post #10

Nothing compared to pirated CDs with Office and Windows, 20 yrs back.

They don't care, they would rather let you use pirated MS software than move to Linux. There is a repo on GH with powershell scripts for activating windows/office and they let it sit there. Just checked, repo has 165K stars. This could be the same, they know devs mostly prefer to use cursor and/or claude than copilot.

They don't care, they would rather let you use pirated MS software than move to Linux.

Not even sure that's true anymore. How else to explain WSL/WSL2? They practically lead you to Linux by the hand these days.

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#82

Post by userbinator »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #81
stanac wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't care, they would rather let you use pirated MS software than move to Linux. There is a repo on GH with powershell scripts for activating windows/office and they let it sit there. Just checked, repo has 165K stars. This could be the same, they know devs mostly prefer to use cursor and/or claude than copilot.

They don't care, they would rather let you use pirated MS software than move to Linux. Not even sure that's true anymore. How else to explain WSL/WSL2? They practically lead you to Linux by the hand these days.

Even with that, your hardware is still running Windows.

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#84

Post by everfrustrated »

Copilot fairly recently added support for running sub-agents using different models to the model that invoked them.

If this report is to be believed, they didn't implement billing correctly for the sub-agents allowing more costly models to be run for free as sub-agents.

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#85

Post by everfrustrated »

likium wrote: post #65
indigodaddy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So 100 Opus requests a month? That's not a lot.

For $10 flat per request up to 128k tokens they’re losing money. 100 * 100k is 10m tokens. At current api pricing that’s $50 input tokens, not even accounting for output!

You didn't account for cached input tokens - some % of input tokens will be follow-on prompts which are billed at the cheaper cached token rate.

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#86

Post by brushfoot »

likium wrote: post #65
indigodaddy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So 100 Opus requests a month? That's not a lot.

For $10 flat per request up to 128k tokens they’re losing money. 100 * 100k is 10m tokens. At current api pricing that’s $50 input tokens, not even accounting for output!

And a request can consume more than 128k tokens.

A cloud agent works iteratively on your requests, making multiple commits.

I put large features into my requests and the agent has no problem making hundreds of changes.

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#87

Post by brushfoot »

pluralmonad wrote: post #76
brushfoot wrote: post #23

Even without hacks, Copilot is still a cheap way to use Claude models: - $10/month - Copilot CLI for Claude Code type CLI, VS Code for GUI - 300 requests (prompts) on Sonnet 4.5, 100 on Opus 4.6 (3x) - One prompt only ever consumes one request, regardless of tokens used - Agents auto plan tasks and create PRs - "New Agent" in VS Code runs agent locally - "New Cloud Agent" runs agent in the cloud ( https://github.com/…

I've had single prompt to Opus consume as many as 13 premium messages. The Copilot harness is so gimped so they can abstract tokens from messages. Every person that started with Copilot that I know that tried CC were amazed at the power difference. Stepping out of a golf cart and into .

It hasn't done that to me. It's worked according to their docs:

> Copilot Chat uses one premium request per user prompt, multiplied by the model's rate.

> Each prompt to Copilot CLI uses one premium request with the default model. For other models, this is multiplied by the model's rate.

> Copilot coding agent uses one premium request per session, multiplied by the model's rate. A session begins when you ask Copilot to create a pull request or make one or more changes to an existing pull request.

https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/concepts/billing/copilot-...

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#88

Post by bazodedo »

The "premium request" billing model where you pay per invocation and not for usage is very obviously not a sustainable approach and creates skewed incentives (e.g. for microsoft to degrade response quality), especially with the shift towards longer running agentic sessions as opposed to simple oneshot chat questions, which the system was presumably designed for. Its just a very obvious fundamental incompatibility and the system is in increasing need of replacement. Usage linked (pay per token) is probably the way to go, as is industry standard.

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#89

Post by wat10000 »

bondarchuk wrote: post #74
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew someone would respond with this. HN is rampant with this sort of contrarian defeatism, and I just responded the other day to a nearly identical comment on a different topic, so: No, it is not better. I have spent $AGE years of my life developing the ability to determine whether someone is authentically providing me sympathy, and when they are, I actually appreciate it. When they aren’t, I realize that that per…

The world would not actually be improved by having 1000s of customer service reps genuinely authentically feel sorry. You're literally demanding real people to experience real negative emotions over some IT problem you have.

But it would be improved by having them be honest and not say they’re sorry when they’re not.

Re: Billing can be bypassed using a combo of subagents with an agent definition

#90

Post by consp »

bondarchuk wrote: post #74
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew someone would respond with this. HN is rampant with this sort of contrarian defeatism, and I just responded the other day to a nearly identical comment on a different topic, so: No, it is not better. I have spent $AGE years of my life developing the ability to determine whether someone is authentically providing me sympathy, and when they are, I actually appreciate it. When they aren’t, I realize that that per…

The world would not actually be improved by having 1000s of customer service reps genuinely authentically feel sorry. You're literally demanding real people to experience real negative emotions over some IT problem you have.

They don't have to be but they at least can try to help. When dealing with automated response units the outcome is the same: much talk, no solution. With a rep you can at lease see what's available within their means and if you are nice to them they might actually be able to help you or at least make you feel less bad about it.
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