FWIW neither hoard nor ration imply anything about permanence of the thing to me. Whether you were rationed bread or you hoarded bread, the bread isn't going to be usable forever. At the same time whether you were rationed sugar or hoarded sugar, the sugar isn't going to expire (with good storage).

Rationed/hoarded do imply, to me, something different about how the quantity came to be though. Rationed being given or setting aside a fixed amount, hoarded being that you stockpiled/amassed it. Saying "you hoarded your rations" (whether they will expire) does feel more on the money than "you ration your rations" from that perspective.

I hope this doesn't come off too "well aktually", I've just been thinking about how I still realize different meanings/origins of common words later in life and the odd things that trigger me to think about it differently for the first time. A recent one for me was that "whoever" has the (fairly obvious) etymology of who+ever https://www.etymonline.com/word/whoever vs something like balloon, which has a comparatively more complex history https://www.etymonline.com/word/balloon

For me, the difference between ration and hoard is the uhh…rationality of the plan.

Rationing suggests a deliberate, calculated plan: we’ll eat this much at these particular times so our food lasts that long. Hoard seems more ad hoc and fear-driven: better keep yet another beat-up VGA cable, just in case.

> Hoard seems more ad hoc and fear-driven: better keep yet another beat-up VGA cable, just in case.

Counterexample: animals hoarding food for winter time, etc.

Rather a corroborating example than a counter, if you believe how many nuts squirrels lose sight of after burying them.

Exactly. How many random computer dongles and power supplies get buried in sundry boxes that are effectively lost to the world?

It can only happens in HackerNews that people talking about Claude Code limit, can start discussing what is a better a word for explaining it. :-)

I just love this community for these silly things.

Isn't hoarding means you can get more bread ? While rationing means: "here is 1kg, use it however you want but you can't get more".

Hoarding doesn't really imply how you got it, just that you stockpile once you do. I think you're bang on rationing - it's about assigning the fixed amount. The LLM provider does the rationing, the LLM user hoards their rations.

One could theoretically ration their rations out further... but that would require knowing the usage to the point to set the remaining fixed amounts - which is precisely whT's missing in the interface.

Bread can be rationed but cannot be hoarded.

Rationing implies an ability to measure: this amount per day. But measuring the remaining amount is exactly what Claude Code API does not provide.

So, back to hoarding.

Rationing is precisely what we want to do: I have x usage this week; let me determine precisely how much I can use without going over. Hoarding implies a less reasoned path of “I never know when I might run out so I must use as little as possible, save as much as I can.” One can hoard gasoline but it still expires past a point.