Max Johnson would start his workday by opening Claude Chat and chatting for hours.
The co-founders of Briix, a British startup that helps small and medium-sized businesses leverage AI, fluidly script social media posts, design graphics, and generate documentation, all within one long-running thread.
This long conversation meant he burned through more tokens, the currency of AI usage, but by providing so much context, it also sharpened the model. Johnson told Business Insider that he and his two co-founders could and did work “hours of the day with no problem.”
That rhythm has changed.
In recent weeks, Claude’s usage limits have become more stringent, with Johnson, 24, saying that sometimes “two prompts” for a new chat can exhaust his allowance under his subscription. Currently, he attempts to sketch his work around what feels like an invisible meter.
“Plan your day knowing you have X amount of time to spend,” he said.
The limits can be a challenge, especially for users subscribed to AI plans that are priced lower than enterprise accounts. AI companies are adjusting their prices in response to the cost of running these models.
In late March, Anthropic adjusted peak usage caps to manage demand.
An Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement that the company is adjusting its five-hour session limit to address the increased demand for Claude and is introducing efficiency improvements to offset the impact. Approximately 7% of users will reach session limits that did not previously exist. The company is also investing in production capacity.
From entrepreneurs to software developers, restrictions on the use of AI tools are changing the way some workers structure their time, prioritize tasks, and think about work itself.
Set your working days with restrictions in mind
For Johnson, sometimes having to wait until the evening reset can introduce a new kind of fragmentation into his day. Johnson said that at times he and his co-founders will reach their limits and try to figure out what to do next.
“Panic sets in,” he said. It may take 30 minutes to an hour to consider how to proceed.
Teams may get food, but timeouts aren’t always welcomed.
“I don’t feel like we’ve reached the end yet, because all I’m thinking about is, ‘When are these restrictions going to be reset and we can go back to normal?'” Johnson said.
Rather than relying on long, memorized chats, Johnson increasingly breaks things down into smaller projects. His social media work includes scriptwriting, animation, and documentation, each with a precise scope of instructions to save you tokens.
Johnson, the company’s only full-time employee, previously shared a single Claude subscription plan with his co-founder. Now you can easily see what others are working on. Now moving to personal accounts, the five-employee company in Manchester, England, may eventually switch to an enterprise plan, which he estimates could cost about $2,400 a year.
Saturday is a day for programmers
For some developers, restrictions are part of their strategy.
Ani Potts, a 21-year-old math major at New York University, is building her startup in stealth mode, treating her use of AI like a weekly budget. He tries to plan for when his allowance will reset by focusing his work on high-intensity blocks.
After a day of classes, Potts often breaks her work into four hours. He saves his most demanding tasks, such as research, testing, and any future coding he might do, for when he’s about to reach his usage limit. When Potts approaches the upper limit, he either stops completely or shifts down to smaller problems, like figuring out why the buttons on an app he’s developing are “a little bluer” than he would like.
Potts told Business Insider that being forced into AI hibernation can be “like being in slow motion,” but he still tries to think of it as a blessing.
“I can use my brain again,” Potts said jokingly.
The result is a rhythm that is expected to push you to the limit, which can sometimes come in handy. For example, if Mr. Potts had free time on Friday, he would be forced to review his work and reconsider his priorities.
Saturdays, when there are no classes, are spent locked at home. Instead of going to a bar or club, “I do Claude Chord,” he said.
stop working by one’s own choice
Danial Qureshi, a software developer in Toronto, often stops working on personal projects when he reaches the limit on his Claude Pro subscription, which costs about $28 CAD per month.
“Basically, it’s not even worth the time to write the code by hand when you can have someone like Claude write the code for you,” he told Business Insider. That’s because the AI’s output could be 10 times his ability, he said.
Still, Qureshi, 27, sees an upside to the limitations. I feel more intuitive by compressing tasks that used to take hours into short, AI-assisted outputs.
“Now I can get more done without feeling cognitively burnt out at the end of the day,” Qureshi said.
On the weekends, I might spend a few hours building a project like an AI agent that analyzes jogging data and adjusts training schedules, stopping when it approaches the limit of a five-hour window.
That means it’s open the rest of the day.
“Even if you actually go to the gym, meet friends, or go out to dinner, you end up using up all your tokens and reaching your spending limit,” Qureshi said.
reset expectations
For Johnson, AI tools have significantly increased what he can expect to accomplish in a day. When that doesn’t happen, he says, he’s forced to rethink his approach.
Mr. Johnson still relies heavily on Claude, sometimes relying on ChatGPT as a backup, but expects to continue paying him.
In the meantime, Johnson’s workday may continue to be disrupted by the AI suspension.
“Let’s eat now,” he said. “Let’s relax – wait for the limits to reset – then get back to work.”
Do you have a story to share about session limits? Contact this reporter at: tparadis@businessinsider.com.