I've been using GPT for over two years now, so I'd call myself a heavy user Writing proposals, polishing copy, organizing research — sometimes I'd even get out of bed in the middle of the night to talk an idea through with it Because of network issues, I've always gone through a relay service — you know the kind, the third-party API forwarding services Cheap and convenient, and aside from the occasional hiccup, mostly good enough
The problem started recently. The relay I'd been using began getting flaky — and I suspect most of them are in the same state Timeouts during peak hours became the norm Sometimes when I was in a rush to process a document, it just wouldn't connect, and I'd burn an hour or two paying for nothing while getting zero output A few times, I was having it revise a long document and it disconnected halfway through — all the conversation context from before, gone What really unsettled me was that relay services in this space shut down and run off with your money without warning The balance I'd topped up, my usage habits, my carefully tuned prompts — all of it was parked on something that could vanish at any moment
What actually made me switch wasn't the disconnects themselves
Disconnects and timeouts — you can grit your teeth through those What really made me restless was a single thought: my workflow can't be built on a foundation that could collapse at any time
I looked back at how I use AI and realized that all these years I'd been "accommodating the tool" Files had to be manually copied into the chat box, output manually copied out and formatted, switching windows broke context, and if the tool crashed, everything restarted from zero AI is smart, but all the carrying, bridging, and fallback work around it — that was all on me The relay's instability was just the trigger that lit up this long-standing absurdity
But "wanting to switch" and "daring to switch" are two different things The biggest cost of switching tools isn't money — it's trial and error Is the model any good? Will I get used to it? If it turns out bad, the money and time I've sunk are wasted That's exactly where I got stuck for several days
WorkBuddy happened to dissolve this worry New users get 2,000 credits on signup, which I calculated was enough to run my real work through it — writing proposals, organizing data, editing code — before deciding whether to stay or go That's a smart design: it dares you to test it with real work rather than making you pay after watching a demo video What put my concerns further at ease was the model lineup: GLM-5.3, Kimi, DeepSeek — all the top-tier domestic models are in there No more racking my brain over which backend is which or how to integrate; just pick whichever fits the task
After a month, what has it actually brought me?
To be clear upfront: everything below is personal experience, not a review, and definitely not a recommendation Whether it suits others I can't say — I'm only speaking for myself
The most immediate feeling is stability No more watching the connection status with anxiety, no more manually backing up every conversation It sounds trivial, but only people who've been tormented by relay services understand: stability isn't a feature, it's a prerequisite Without the prerequisite, everything else is moot
Matching the model to the task actually lowered my costs This was the most surprising part For everyday copywriting and spreadsheet work, I run cheap models — the results are perfectly adequate and credits drain slowly When I hit a hard bone like writing code or refactoring complex logic, I switch to a stronger model Some cheap models look unimpressive, but they handle most of my coding and office tasks fine Before, on the relay, good models billed by usage and hurt to use, while bad models I was afraid to touch Now it's task-based allocation, and I know exactly where the money goes Right now the cost is about the same as the relay, but what I feel more is stability — my work's turnaround time is now guaranteed
I can dispatch work even when I'm out I didn't take this feature seriously before using it, but now it's a favorite: I can send tasks to the WorkBuddy on my computer remotely through WeChat on my phone Once I was out visiting a client and suddenly remembered a summary spreadsheet I needed for the next day — I left a note on WeChat, and by the time I got back to the office, the finished product was sitting in the folder Combined with its integration with Tencent Docs and WeCom's ecosystem, documents and spreadsheets close the loop in a single workbench — no more shuttling between seven or eight windows What you save isn't any single step's time, but the friction between every step
It remembers me The longer I use it, the more obvious it becomes: my project background, my writing preferences, where my files live — it remembers all of it Every time I write similar material, I don't have to re-explain the background from scratch Looking back now, having to reintroduce myself at the start of every conversation was a huge hidden waste (Not sure why, but on the relay I'd sometimes have to open a new chat window just to get a normal response)
A few honest caveats
It's not a panacea, and I should warn anyone thinking of trying it Credits burn faster than you'd expect — complex tasks eating several hundred credits in one go is common The 2,000 free credits let you get a feel for it, but long-term heavy use needs planning It also occasionally gets stuck — a task running halfway and freezing, forcing a restart; not often, but it happens For deep industry research or real-time source verification, the depth is average — don't trust it fully, verify it yourself The core arguments of a report and the trade-off logic of a proposal — those are yours to decide For authorized local folders, my approach is to only open the working directory; luckily, for high-risk operations it pops a second confirmation dialog rather than blindly deleting things Treat it like an efficient but occasionally needs-a-glance intern, and your mindset is in the right place
One last thing
Switching from GPT, it's not that I have any complaints about GPT — it's still one of the strongest conversational models in my mind What I swapped out was that way of using it: "always on the verge of disconnecting, carrying everything myself" The relay's instability forced my hand, but it led me to unexpectedly discover something better suited to my working habits
Top comments (0)