Matt Maher opens with a note he received from OpenAI. As a longtime $200 Pro subscriber, he learned that his weekly allowance for Codex and ChatGPT work will be cut in half on October 30th, at the same price. He is a little worried and a little frustrated, but he finds it hard to stay frustrated because OpenAI feels like it is paying attention to its customers.
The video covers three things: how he reads the allowance change, the fun customer-facing moves OpenAI has been making (resets and a 28-day shipping series), and an application he built and uses every day to see how much runway he has left on his subscriptions. A free version of that application is available, with a link in the video description.
What: OpenAI emailed Pro subscribers that, starting October 30th, the weekly allowance for Codex and ChatGPT work is halved while the price stays the same. Anyone who joined the $200 plan recently is probably already at the lower allowance. The change is the adjustment now coming for older subscribers.
Why: Maher found the email's explanation a little tone deaf. It said the models are better, so users can still get more work done than before, which felt like a thin reason for losing half of what he was paying for.
How: His own reading of the pricing is simpler. The $20 plan gets one unit of weekly allowance. The $200 plan is 10 times the price, so it gets 10 times the allowance. His older plan was getting 20 times, so the change puts everything on a common scale. That makes sense to him, especially alongside the ability to buy extra usage. He says it makes sense long term but admits he is still a bit frustrated, and that he will get over it.
What: A reset refreshes your allowance so you can get back to using it. OpenAI has done this for a while. After a disruption in September, it reset usage for paid Codex and ChatGPT work users. Sometimes a reset is a celebration, such as when OpenAI reached 25 million active users and reset those paid subscriptions.
Why: Maher likes that this acknowledges people are using the products and creates a nice feeling. He says it is part of what has drawn him back.
How: Banked resets are the same as a reset, except you get to save them. They come with an expiration date, but you can use them when you need them. On OpenAI, using one refreshes the allowance and moves your next weekly renewal forward to a week after you use the reset. If you are partway through the week, looking at what is left and thinking you will not make it, a saved reset is another option. Anthropic also has saved resets, and Maher has received one. Their normal weekly renewal stays where it was when you use it, so they work a little differently. In either case, think of it as a refill, not a whole allowance added on top of whatever you have not used. That is worth knowing when you want to get the most out of it, and it is part of why he built his tracking program.
What: Tibo from OpenAI has been running a 28-day series on X, from October 5th through November 1st. The idea is to ship an improvement or give people a reset every single day.
Why: Maher acknowledges that not every day will be a banger, but the series creates enjoyment around features that could otherwise have simply been released. The reactions on X have become a sport of their own: some people say a drop is useless and should have been included originally, while others say it is exactly what they were waiting for and unblocks something they were stuck on. He sees that mix as one more layer of enjoyable community among people using these tools.
How: He notes OpenAI did a holiday version of this, 12 days of OpenAI in 2024, with some small things and some big things, and he hopes they do it again. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have fantastic models, and he can get a lot of work done in either. He has preferences, but if he needs to be on one or the other on a given day, that is okay. So the experience around the product matters, and he thinks OpenAI deserves a little credit because a lot of companies do not do something like this.
What: With several resets in hand, Maher is trying to decide when to use them relative to his weekly allowance. More than that, when he comes in each morning he wants to know which of his accounts has room to work. He has both OpenAI and Claude subscriptions and tries to keep his work as interchangeable between them as possible. So he built a small application.
Why: He wanted to be able to look in and see what he has left. The app is called Agent Runway. It is usually a menu bar application that puts meters in your menu bar, and you can open a panel for a closer look. The balances, the weekly usage chart, and the saved resets information are all free.
How: In his example, one meter shows 14% left with a red bar, a reminder that this account is coming to a close. It says he is running short and renews Wednesday (the panel shows the renewal time as 11:22 PM, really Thursday). Another message says that at the current pace he will run out tomorrow at midnight, five days before renewal. A yellow bar at the bottom says one reset expires in six days. Hovering over it shows every reset he has for OpenAI along with expiration dates, which matters. He has one expiring in six days, which he expects to use today, and two more he needs to use fairly quickly because he wants to get the full double, the 20 times amount.
What: The pro version of the app adds an activity view with a lot of visibility into what is being used. Looking at the last 24 hours, he can see where he has been working, including a stretch using a project he calls Astra, and he can break usage down by project. It can also pull in extra details, and he calls it very dense and worth a look.
Why: At the very least, it lets him track what he has left in the morning. He can walk in and ask how much is left and how much longer until renewal. If the meter is yellow, maybe slow down.
How: The tool also helped him find something he did not know was happening. He woke up to about 44% left, then a short time later (he guesses 10 to 30 minutes) saw 37%, a drop of about 7% of his entire weekly allotment. That made him ask what was going on, since he should not be burning that fast. He plans to make a video about it. He is clear that the tool is not a perfect observation tool for everything you do, but it works well as a first line of defense.
What: Even though OpenAI is cutting his allowance, Maher finds it exciting to see what feels like care for the customer and a little personality around the company. He acknowledges that people have different feelings about big companies and says he is not trying to minimize that.
Why: From an outreach standpoint, this feels like people talking to people who use their products, which he finds refreshing. He congratulates OpenAI, noting that it is hard for a company to create community or personality, and says it feels like Tibo is talking to users rather than marketing to them. He expects to take some heat for the take.
How: The next video will show how he uses the tool to identify problems and how he fixes them. Beyond that, he plans to dive back into continuing to build the agentic systems he has been discussing, which he believes are the next wave of AI use. He says it is an easy thing to start but not obvious, so he will keep pushing into it.
Maher's message is balanced. He is frustrated by the halved allowance, but he gives OpenAI credit for resets, banked resets, and a daily shipping series that make the company feel closer to its users. The practical takeaway is to know your runway: understand how resets work, track what you have left each morning, and use expiring resets before they lapse.