Rahul Manjhi

I have another project where there are three years of decisions made on layers, two refactors that never saw the light of day, and a misc directory that I dare not open. Last month I deliberately tried Cursor and Claude Code on it for two purposes.

For deciphering the mess, the terminal agent proved superior. It told me why a background task executed twice and tracked down the problem through five files without my even looking at any of them. For minor changes in user interface, the editor was superior since inline diffs allowed me to accept one line and reject the next.

I keep getting pitched on lifetime deals pay once, get access forever as a way to raise fast cash, build a customer base, and create a wave of early evangelists who feel invested in my success.

The appeal is obvious. One big lump of money now, no churn on those customers ever, and a group of people who will defend the product because they own a piece of it forever. For a small product, that cash can be the difference between continuing and quitting.

We used to believe every SaaS needed a free tier, but hard to use apps usually lose free signups right at onboarding. Without built-in community templates or direct guidance most people drop off within minutes.

Switching to a short paid trial forces users to have skin in the game making them more likely to walk through setup examples and discover real value.