Algorithm/Insights
If number of allowed keystrokes(N) is less than 7, then the maximum number of As possible is N. You should be able to verify this yourself.
It turns out that for N greater than or equal to 7, to produce maximum number of As, the sequence of N keystrokes that will be used will always end with a suffix of Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, followed by all Ctrl-V's. We have to basically figure out the point(say critical-point) after which we should use this suffix of Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, followed by all Ctrl-V's to obtain maximum number of As.
To find out this critical point for input N, we try out each of the values from N-3 to 1 and compute the number of As that are produced after making a value as critical point and then appending it with the suffix of Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, followed by all Ctrl-V's. While computing maximum number of As possible with each trial critical point(from N-3 to 1) plus above suffix of Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, followed by all Ctrl-V's, we use maximum number of As already computed for each value(N-3 to 1).
Say f(N) denotes the maximum number of As possible for N keystrokes. Let use see how do we compute f(N) for N = 7.
First we choose critical point 'N_critical' as 4. We already know the value of f(4) which is 4. For remaining 3 keystrokes, we use Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. The string of keystrokes produced will be A,A,A,A,Ctrl-A,Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. These last 3 keystrokes essentially double the value of f(4). Hence for 'N_critical = 4', we get 8 number of As which is 2*f(4).
Now we choose critical point 'N_critical' as 3. We already know the value of f(3) which is 3. For remaining 4 keystrokes, we use Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-V. The string of keystrokes produced will be A,A,A,Ctrl-A,Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-V. These last 4 keystrokes essentially triple the value of f(3). Hence for 'N_critical = 3', we get 9 number of As which is 3*f(3).
Similarly, for 'N_critical' = 2, we get 4*f(2) number of As which is 8. And for 'N_critical' = 1, maximum number of As possible is 5*f(1) which is 5.
Therefore choosing 'N_critical' as 3 gives us maximum number of As. In other words, f(7) = 9.
In general,
f(N) = N if N < 7
= max{2*f(N-3), 3*f(N-4),..., (N-2)*f(1)}
The algorithm basically needs to implement the above recurrence relation where base case is defined as f(N) = N when N < 7. To avoid re-computations of same sub-problems, intermediate results are stored in an array and re-used if required. Please check out function findMaxAs(int n, int[] maxAsSolution) in code snippet for implementation details.
For proof of correctness, please see the video above starting from time - 8:48 minutes.