I have the same exact issue. I can work for about a day and half with the 3k credits. Worse is that so many SDLC actions (deploying, debugging, version control, etc) are only accessible via prompt. So if you use all of your credits, then deploy, then see that the deployed app has a bug that didn’t show up in the editor - you can’t fix it unless you pay more or wait a month. Using your own API key obviously allows you to continue to work but in my experience it is even more expensive (see my post here New App Builder - First Impressions). The current MCP also does not help since it mostly just passes a prompt to the Retool agent.
My understanding is that the Retool team is working on some things that can be helpful for this although no timeline is communicated:
- Allowing one to choose the “effort” level which currently uses provider defaults (for Anthropic this is “high”)
- Enhancing the MCP so that a local agent (like a subscription) can be used to push code changes.
They are also hoping that model costs in general will come down which seems more like hope than a strategy.