Yesterday, I hit the rate limits on all my AI subscriptions.

Kimi K2. Claude Pro. Copilot.

I was blocked. For two hours.

I was just sitting there, staring at the message in Copilot CLI… wondering what to do next.

Do I:

Buy extra credits? Upgrade my plans to some “pro max” tier

Or just code by myself like I used to?

First option = more money. And honestly, I wasn’t ready to invest more.

Second option = free, but let’s be real… slower. More friction. All the “boring” parts: syntax, class declarations, wiring things together.

Still, I chose to code on my own.

And weirdly… I was excited.

I hadn’t done that in weeks. It felt like a long time.

But wow — I didn’t expect it to be that challenging.

I was working on a small feature: refactoring a top bar and customizing a greeting based on time (Good morning / Good evening, etc.).

Simple, right?

Yet Kotlin syntax didn’t come instantly.…