It was past midnight, my favorite model provider was melting down — HTTP 429, engine overloaded, the whole fleet of requests queueing behind a launch-week traffic spike — and I was doing what any rational person does at that hour: deal-hunting for a product I didn't need.
The object of desire was Tencent's CodeBuddy, an AI coding IDE. Its Pro plan was running a promo: $9.95 a month, exactly half the usual $19.90. And the question that kept me scrolling was a small one with a big shadow behind it: does the discount last until I cancel?
What followed was a full midnight teardown — pricing, product, competitive positioning, the works. I didn't buy it. But I came out the other end with a reusable way to think about the most crowded category in tech, and that turned out to be worth more than ten dollars.
