The Token Tab: A Developer's Audit of the AI Hype Stack

A GitHub repo I starred in January does not run anymore. The tutorial I followed in February has a pinned issue that says "keys getting banned." The Mac mini I was going to buy is still on the wish list, which turns out to be the only part of this I got right. This is not an anti-AI post. The tools are real, the tokens are real, the productivity wins are real. But most AI tutorials in 2026 are selling layers 1 and 4 of a four-layer stack and hoping you do not look at layers 2 and 3 until after y