The AI Tool Fire Drill
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Mathew PaquetChecklist · 4 min read

The AI Tool Fire Drill

List every AI tool you pay for, fix the four weak spots a correction hits first, and test your backup in one afternoon.

01 The squeeze doesn't look like a price hike

Ray Dalio says the AI bubble is close to bursting. Jamie Dimon says "in total, it pays off." You don't have to pick a side. Nobody can time a correction, but you can read your own bills, because the squeeze already has a shape.

The free tier gets lighter. On October 9, 2026, the model picker in free Gemini went from three choices to one. Free accounts get Flash-Lite, the lightest of the three. The allowance shrinks. GitHub moved every Copilot plan to usage-based billing (you pay for the work you use, not a fixed monthly amount) and said "Plan prices aren't changing." OpenAI's $200 Pro plan stays $200, but from October 30 the usage it includes for work and coding drops from 20 times the Plus plan to 10. The product closes. OpenAI shut down its Sora app in March. Relay, an AI automation tool built as an alternative to Zapier, shut down completely in September. Products disappear even when the company doesn't.

The sticker stays. What you get shrinks. And the warning can be short: when Anthropic cut a coding startup called Windsurf off from most of its direct access to Claude 3 models, Windsurf's CEO said they got "less than five days of notice." This sheet gets you ready for that bad Friday in one afternoon.

02 The list most teams never write

Every AI tool, who uses it, and what stops if it disappears. Most teams have never written it down. Fill in one block per tool.

AI tool list
AI TOOL LIST (updated [DATE] by [NAME])

Tool: [NAME]
Plan: [FREE OR PAID, PLAN NAME, MONTHLY COST]
Who uses it: [NAMES]
Jobs it does: [E.G. CLIENT RESEARCH, LEAD FOLLOW-UPS]
Touches a customer: [YES / NO]
What we built inside it: [INSTRUCTIONS, EXAMPLES, BRAND RULES]
Where a copy of that lives: [DOCUMENT LINK, OR "NOWHERE"]
What stops if it disappears: [THE JOB, AND WHO NOTICES FIRST]
Tested backup: [MODEL, DATE TESTED, OR "NONE"]

Every line that says "nowhere" or "none" goes on this week's to-do list.

Most teams think they could move fast. In a Zapier survey of over 500 executives at companies paying for AI, 89% said they could switch AI vendors within a month. Of those who had tried, 58% said it failed or took much more work than expected. Only 6% could stop using their main AI vendor without any interruption.

03 Four tools, four fixes

Each kind of tool has already taken a hit this year. Find each one on your list and tick the fix.

Move anything that touches a customer off free tiers. Free plans are where the trimming starts, with no warning you'd notice.
Write down which jobs depend on a big plan's allowance. And what they'd cost if the allowance moved, before your bill tells you.
Put every automation on the list, with what stops if it goes. That's Relay's story: one month it works, the next month it's gone.
Get your custom assistant's work out of the tool. That's the Windsurf story: five days. Section 04 shows how.
04 Keep your instructions in a document you own

What you lose isn't the subscription. It's everything you built inside it: brand rules, examples, instructions.

Open a document your business owns, outside the AI tool. Copy in every instruction, brand rule and example your assistant uses, word for word. Export on a schedule. Put a repeating date in the calendar.

If the assistant lives in Claude

From Claude's help page: on a Free, Pro or Max plan, use the web app or Claude Desktop. Click your initials in the lower left corner, select Settings, go to Privacy and click Export data. A download link arrives by email and expires 24 hours after it's sent. On a Team or Enterprise plan, only the organization's Primary Owner can export.

The export is a backup, not a move. It can't be imported into another personal Claude account. The document you own is what travels.

05 The fire drill

Not a second subscription for everyone. A tested backup.

Take your most important AI job. Run it on a different model, using the instructions from your document. Time how long it takes to get it working.
Does the output hold up? Compare it with your usual tool's result.
What did you have to rewrite? Add every change back into your document.
Who on the team could do it without you? If the answer is nobody, the backup lives in your head.
Fire drill log
Date: [DATE]
Job: [THE AI JOB WE TESTED]
Backup model: [MODEL]
Time to get it working: [HOURS]
Output holds up: [YES / NO, WHAT WAS WEAKER]
What we rewrote: [CHANGES]
Who could do it without me: [NAME]

If it took an afternoon, you're fine. If you don't know where your instructions even live, that's your answer.

A correction doesn't take AI away. It takes away the discount, and the warning time.

Sources

Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance: Dalio says we're nearing the point where the AI bubble may burst JPMorgan's Dimon weighs in on the AI boom Tech Insider: Google cuts free Gemini to one model GitHub: Copilot is moving to usage-based billing The Next Web: OpenAI halves Pro 200 usage and launches a $500 plan TechCrunch: The AI graveyard TechCrunch: Windsurf says Anthropic is limiting its direct access to Claude models Zapier: AI vendor lock-in survey Claude Help Center: Export your Claude data
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Thanks
You finished it
Now do one thing

Take your most important AI job, run it on a different model this week, and time how long it takes to get it working.

Guide What Its 90% Is Worth
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