I burned $800 in Claude tokens so you don't have to. Here's what I'm going to share.

#claude #ai #agents #vi

Hi, I'm Billy. 👋

I'm the founder of MC-MONKEYS, a visual command center for Claude Code agents. But before I built it, I spent 6 months doing something much less glamorous: burning money and time figuring out how to work with AI agents.

Over $800 in Claude tokens. Countless hours of rework. Three agents running in three terminals while I lost my mind trying to track what each one was doing.

This post is my "hello world" on dev.to. I want to tell you what I'm going to be writing about here, why I think it matters right now, and who this content is for.

Who I am (short version)

Full-stack dev from Argentina 🇦🇷
Spent the last year going deep into AI agents — first with ChatGPT assistants (my early "Forge Method"), then OpenAI, now fully on Claude Code
Founder of MC-MONKEYS — the tool I wish I had from day one
Building in public, sharing everything I learn along the way

I'm not here to sell you a bootcamp or promise you'll "10x your productivity with AI." I'm here because I made every expensive mistake so you don't have to, and writing it down is the best way I know to help the next person.

The problem I keep seeing

Every week, I meet someone who's excited about building with AI agents. They've watched the Twitter demos. They fired up Claude Code, or Cursor, or Lovable. They got a taste of the magic.

And then... they hit the wall.

Their agent built the wrong thing and they didn't notice until 3 subtasks later
They burned $30 in tokens on a feature that could have cost $3 if they'd structured the task properly
They ended up with 47 terminal tabs open and no idea what was done, what wasn't, what was blocked
They stopped trusting the agent — and went back to doing everything manually

This isn't an agent problem. It's a coordination problem. We got really good tools (Claude, Cursor, MCP, etc.) but almost no one is talking about how to actually work with them. The methodology is missing.

That's the gap I want to fill here.

What I'm going to be writing about

Expect posts in a few recurring flavors:

🧭 The Golden Rules series
A framework I developed after months of failure. Simple rules that — when you follow them — make AI agents actually ship. Things like:

Every task must produce a clearly defined deliverable
Always specify the output folder before the agent starts working
Break one task into 2-5 subtasks, not 20, not 1
How to handle blockers so they don't cascade

I'll drop the full framework soon. It's the most valuable thing I can share.

🛠️ Real build logs
I've been documenting 4+ real projects I built using MC-MONKEYS and the Golden Rules. Mobile apps, landing pages, full-stack POCs — I'll break down each one honestly. What worked, what broke, how long it took, what it cost in tokens.

💰 Token economics
Nobody talks about this: agents cost money. A lot of money, if you're not careful. I'll share specific examples of tasks that went from $40 to $4 just by changing how I structured the prompt. This stuff matters.

⚙️ Multi-agent coordination
When you have 3+ agents working at once, the hardest part isn't the code. It's knowing who's doing what, who's blocked, what just finished. I'll write about the patterns I use to keep it manageable.

🎯 Product notes
I'm building MC-MONKEYS publicly. I'll share pricing experiments, launch learnings, what converted, what didn't. No bullshit, real numbers.

Who this is for

If you're:

A developer who started using Claude Code, Cursor, or similar — and you're tired of feeling blind
A vibe coder or non-traditional builder using AI to ship projects — and you want to level up
A founder exploring agents for your own work and wondering "is this actually going to work?"

...then we're going to get along.

If you already have a rock-solid multi-agent setup and run 10 agents in parallel without breaking a sweat — cool, maybe I'll learn from you in the comments.

What's next

Over the coming weeks I'll publish:

The 7 Golden Rules — the full framework, with examples (this is the big one)
How I built a mobile app in 20 minutes — full build log with screenshots
The $47 mistake — a specific case of agent rework and what I learned
Why I stopped using multiple terminals — the case for a visual layer

If any of this sounds useful, follow me here on dev.to so you catch the next post.

And if you want the short version: I'm building tools and sharing methods for people who want to work with AI agents seriously. Not as a gimmick, not as a toy — as a real way to build software.

See you in the next post.

— Billy

P.S. — If you're curious about what I'm building: MC-MONKEYS is the visual command center for Claude Code agents. It enforces the Golden Rules natively so you don't have to remember them. There's a Founding 100 deal running right now — lifetime access for $36. Not a subscription, not a trial. One payment, forever. 87 spots left as of writing.