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

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.