Built a session-limited AI system to control usage (and it worked better than expected)
Recently worked on an AI system for a music industry website redesign. There were two parts to it: 1. A public-facing AI chat widget for general queries + lead capture 2. A private, full-screen AI assistant inside the client portal. The second one was more interesting. The client didn’t just want “AI support” — they were concerned about users overusing it and burning unnecessary tokens. So instead of a typical chatbot, I designed a session-based interaction system: - Each user gets a 5-minute active window - At minute 4 → a warning is triggered (“1 minute left”) - At minute 5 → session ends + redirects to an external GPT - Then a 5-minute cooldown kicks in - After cooldown → user can start again It basically runs in a loop. What’s interesting is how this changes behavior: Users become more intentional with their questions instead of treating it like an endless chat. Also ended up optimizing one of their internal workflows in the process: A task that used to take ~6 hours manually is now done in under 10 minutes. No fancy theory here—just structuring AI usage in a way that actually makes sense operationally. Still experimenting with how far this “controlled AI interaction” approach can go.