Free LLM Tokens Are Not Free Trust: A Pairing Session That Ended with a Boundary

Description and use

A probe on a free LLM tier revealed risks of partial writes, hidden state, and schema mismatches. Implementing five checks made the disposable fixture job safe.

Problem

Using a free LLM tier for a nightly fixture‑generation job risked partial writes and silent failures when the token grant ran out mid‑run.

Outcome

All five checks passed, confirming the free tier can safely run the disposable fixture job without risking partial data or hidden state.

Workflow

• 1. Ask if token grant can run out mid‑run and what happens.
• 2. Define acceptance criteria from questions.
• 3. Write a single‑file probe script with five checks.
• 4. Run probe against the free endpoint before migration.
• 5. If all checks pass, move the fixture generator to MonkeyCode.
• 6. Monitor for failures and re‑run probe if changes occur.

Evidence

The probe sends five short requests, averages the reported tokens, and projects requests against the advertised grant.

Source

The probe posts a canary string, opens a new conversation, and fails if the canary appears in the second reply.

Source