AI Tokens Are Mana

Summary

The most formidable experiences that inspired my passion for making software and design was playing computer games in the bedroom growing up on our Gateway 2000 PC. Of many of the games I love and played, Diablo ranked high on the list. Diablo (1996) is a dark fantasy action RPG by Blizzard Entertainment set in the cursed town of Tristram, where you descend through 16 levels of monster-filled dungeon to confront the Lord of Terror himself. It pioneered the loot-driven, click-to-kill gameplay loop that defined the genre. It was very addictive, just like agent orchestration.You played as one of three classes: the Warrior, a melee bruiser who hit hard but struggled with magic; the Rogue, a nimble archer who sat somewhere in the middle; or the Sorcerer, who was physically fragile but wielded the most devastating spells in the game. Same dungeon, same enemies, completely different relationships with power.In Diablo, the magical energy system is called mana. The word itself comes from Melanesian and Polynesian cultures, where it described a supernatural force — spiritual power that could reside in people, objects, or places. Not magic in the theatrical sense, but authority and potency earned through existence. RPGs borrowed the concept and made it mechanical: mana is the finite resource that fuels your most powerful abilities. Use it well and you’re unstoppable. Drain it at the wrong moment and you’re defenseless.Today, making and building with AI tools feels a lot like magic. People can build an app they’ve dreamt of creating for years in a matter of days.On the All-In Podcast during NVIDIA GTC 2026, Jensen Huang said something that stopped me cold: “If that $500,000 engineer did not consume at least $250,000 worth of tokens, I’m going to be deeply alarmed.”There are ways to read that.The first is the drug dealer take. Jensen runs a company whose entire business model depends on you burning compute. Of course he’s alarmed if you’re not spending. The dealer is always goin...