9 ms·

Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions

319 points by twapi 2mo ago

olsondv 2mo ago
After having used Codex for a promotional month, and now using Claude, Claude is not as efficient with finding relevant information. I can give it the one file it should be using and then it goes off and greps parent directories for more context. It’s also incredibly slow at producing results because of this side work. In this article, it seems like they are catching up to what GitHub copilot users had already been doing since the cost restructuring in June.
apt-apt-apt-apt 2mo ago
I'm finding that unexpected cache rewrites cost me huge. I have 1h cache TTL set, and do nothing to cause rewrite (response in time, no model/effort/tool changes). At 400K tokens in, I'll write a message, and /usage shows only a small increase in cache write. On the next message, cache writes shows 800K, and by the end, I often hit 2M cache writes with no explanation. This seems to happen when: using /btw, asking it to review code, other random times. Anyone know what's going on?
- AlexErrant 2mo ago
  To not answer your question, I have a claude stop hook that my status line uses to tell me how close my cache is to expiring https://pastebin.com/JLXUG16Q https://pastebin.com/JLXUG16Q _entirely_ vibecoded don't @ me.
- radlad 2mo ago
  I have long suspected but not confirmed that /btw uses a lower tier model like Haiku. Depending on how you're triggering reviews, you may be using a sub-agent?
  - apt-apt-apt-apt 2mo ago
    I don't use sub-agents, only the normal linear message-response flow.
  - crthpl 2mo ago
    it does not use haiku. you can just ask Claude (possibly not fable BC of cyber) to reverse engineer the obfuscated JS.
    - StilesCrisis 2mo ago
      I've had Opus refuse to do work due to cybersecurity concerns as well. Quite frustrating when you're trying to fix an exploit--as soon as it reads the bad code, it just shuts down! I ended up cutting out more and more bits of the code until eventually Opus relented.
- Esras 2mo ago
  You may be running into a "known" bug with Claude Code: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/63930 https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/63930
  - apt-apt-apt-apt 2mo ago
    This happens all the time and drives me bananas. It seems to be regular file edits rather than parallel tool calls. I'm sitting on 1.6m cache write even now with 468k in /context. It drives my session costs above $100 regularly. Can someone from Anthropic look into this?
    - Phemist 2mo ago
      Incentives to optimize cache-usage are only aligned between anthropic and you, dear user, when there is not enough compute available to serve the tokens fresh. Apparently enough compute is now available that frugal usage is no longer a requirement and user cost/profit maximization is now the name of the game. I would expect to see more and more "cache-busting" strategies implemented in order to both eek out marginal performance increases and to heavily increase profit.
tolugenius 2mo ago
Part of the cynic in me just wants to ask "why not make a better harness by default?" The other cynic in me knows I'm about to see a hundred post on 'HOW TO 10X CLAUDE" from the ai bros and I'm already tired. I guess if I had to ask something (as someone who doesn't use CC as their daily driver), how much control do you have on subagents and roughly how do define or know when a session is getting too long? I know the answer is "when the model is getting worse" but worse is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence.
- nathanyz 2mo ago
  Yeah, I sort of feel like they could just do this in Claude Code for us in some way. I mean they already run some mini classifier on whether a given prompt is waiting on input, so they could do the same to detect some of these cases, and just handle it. If you have to explain that someone is "holding it wrong"(1), that is product error, not a user error. (1) https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/ https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/
- fg137 2mo ago
  > "why not make a better harness by default?" Especially the /compact part. Like, if a session has been idle for 55 min, why not just automatically run compact at that point?
mccoyb 2mo ago
I mean, it feels hard not to laugh at this type of blog post. My cynical interpretation is that this is a type of passing the buck to engineers in enterprise settings ("Stop spending tokens. Did you read the value maximization blog post? It is your fault.") Oh yes, Claude will do all sorts of different things -- it depends on how you use it! You should totally learn all of these little finicky things ... because now completing your tasks cost money. It's not "free" anymore haha like when you used your old text editor, what are you a grandpa? Oh, and those things will definitely change, as we (the priests of Claude) are vibe coding the system you use to do your little "tasks" ... right, you can't see how it works ... the code is not available. It's all good, just trust us -- we're totally looking out for you. I mean it is utterly ridiculous to talk around this model of development. There are so many walls between you and doing the thing you want to do. Agents are great, but the notion of "best tricks" for how to best use an opaque costful tool which will, by all odds, be completely different in a few months time is quite funny. You know what won't change? A fucking text editor. Or your pi config, or a local model you run and trust.
- csallen 2mo ago
  I'm trying to understand your point of view, but it kind of just sounds like you're against learning how to use tools efficiently? I mean, agentic coding software is hardly the first tool to exist where learning some idiosyncrasies of how to use it well can result in more efficiency and cost savings.
  - mccoyb 2mo ago
    It's very easy to understand: - I'm happy to learn how to use tools efficiently - I like to be able to inspect my tools - I'm against tools changing underneath me Are you against any of these points?
    - csallen 2mo ago
      I think I'm happy about the first two. The third I suppose I care less about, just because I've kind of become used to it from decades working on the internet where many businesses/tools/apps are more like services and less like physical tools that never change.
NoDodgeQuestion 2mo ago
Bro: superintelligent machine line go up AI AGI software solved automate everything Also bro: Run /clearbetween tasks. This prevents prior irrelevant context from being sent back to the model, which can reduce token usage. Set your model and effort level before you start. Changing either one mid-conversation can bust your prompt cache, which can increase token cost. @-mention files instead of naming them. The file gets attached to your message directly, which saves a Read call, or a search if Claude has to go find it. Add quiet flags to noisy commands, or run them in a subagent. Command output is added to the conversation just like a file, and stays there for the rest of the session. Run /context once in a fresh session. It shows what's loaded (CLAUDE.md, MCP tool definitions), so you can cut out anything unnecessary. /compact before you take a break from your keyboard. The prompt cache expires after an hour, and summarizing a conversation is much cheaper while it's still cached.
- NoDodgeQuestion 2mo ago
  Author not bro, sorry misgender
  - pdpi 2mo ago
    I'd argue that women can be bros too, especially when using the word in this sense.
    - runeblaze 2mo ago
      puts on my etiquette hat don’t do that, it is weird, use “bruh” or “dude”
    - NamlchakKhandro 2mo ago
      There are no women on the internet. I remember when the internet was an exchange of ideas instead of using gender to justify value of bad ideas
  - cyber_kinetist 2mo ago
    It has been a while since bro has become a gender-neutral term, particularly in younger circles...
jnwatson 2mo ago
Can anyone explain why the prefix cache is tied to effort? I frequently run Fable at xhigh effort to run statistical modeling way above my undergraduate understanding. Claude Fable produces Masters-degree level output, and then I spend lots of round trips asking it to explain different parts to me. The first part absolutely uses the extra effort, but the interrogation exercise is something a much simpler model, or the same model with much less effort, could answer.
- hellohello2 2mo ago
  One trick is to simply as for a fast answer when talking to a high effort model, when working interactively. Sounds stupid but I do this all the time and it works. Just tell it you are working interactively now and need ultrafast answers with no thinking. I would be really curious to know as well, why effort is linked to cache as its quite inconveniant. Is it possible the token used to indicate effort is only passed once at the start, not per thinking trace, or quite simply that different efforts have different model weights?
- janalsncm 2mo ago
  I’m guessing that there’s a system prompt at the top telling the model about its reasoning budget. So when you switch reasoning effort it busts the cache.
  - foota 2mo ago
    Hmmm... Why wouldn't this be handled like other end of prompt things like the current mode?
    - janalsncm 2mo ago
      Prompt caching only works based on the prefix. Let’s call your output Y and the low reasoning prompt A and a medium reasoning prompt B. Previously you were at A+Y. Switching to medium reasoning makes it B+Y. There’s no prefix which can be cached, so the entire B+Y needs to be reprocessed.
PeterStuer 2mo ago
I do all that, but an 'AS-BUILT' full review of my project still eats 3x my 5 hour budget on max 100€. Meanwhile, my 20€ GPT never hit a limit. Different, but just saying.
nathanyz 2mo ago
This feels like the Anthropic version of "You're holding it wrong" (1) 1) https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/ https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/
- agumonkey 2mo ago
  It feels worse. It's all noob level suggestions that any decent system would have optimized away already.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2mo ago
  Step 1: use a different LLM that isn't 10x slower and 2-5x more expensive for the same level of quality.
bytestrix 2mo ago
do people use the Caveman, RTK plugins
- gavmor 2mo ago
  My agent didn't like it. Indirection causing noise and failure outweighed the token savings. https://regular-reviews.pages.dev/rtk https://regular-reviews.pages.dev/rtk
- guessmyname 2mo ago
  No, because it is useless. • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49080605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49080605 (JetBrains, Does Speaking to Agents Like Cavemen Save 65% of Tokens? We Test) • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48588755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48588755 (The Token Compression Illusion: Why I'm Skeptical of RTK )
  - ed_mercer 2mo ago
    If it can save 10% of tokens, how is that useless?
rhaksw 2mo ago
> @-mention files instead of naming them Love Claude, but the @ mention is broken in the desktop app. For the same project if I type the same query "@ephem" I get: CLI: https://imgur.com/a/VZMUCOa https://imgur.com/a/VZMUCOa (good, relevant results) Desktop: https://imgur.com/a/QLSo4Ms https://imgur.com/a/QLSo4Ms (bad, irrelevant) Opened issue for this and it was automatically closed: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/71421 https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/71421 I could have written the issue better (using CLI as comparison instead of VS Code). But, no doubt in my mind Claude could fix this itself in a minute.
- guessmyname 2mo ago
  > Opened issue for this and it was automatically closed: […] Clarification: It wasn’t closed on submission though. It sat open ~17 days, a bot marked it stale, and it closed when nobody responded to the stale label. The two-phase thing is the part I didn’t know until recently: the stale label is basically asking “is this still relevant?”, and answering it makes the bot back off next time around. nixpkgs does the same. Bumping feels wrong on most trackers, agreed, but at this issue volume I don’t know what else works. Anyway a comment should reopen it. Your CLI vs desktop screenshots are a better repro than most things in that tracker.
  - Banditoz 2mo ago
    Just because a Github issue doesn't have activity doesn't mean it's not an issue anymore.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
  - kristjansson 2mo ago
    the norms of issue trackers are strongly opposed to “bump”. these autoclose bots may yet change that
    - 2mo ago
Glyptodon 2mo ago
What I see is that I have to read a bunch of stuff and go through a bunch of hassle to save money when the root of it is that if I tell an AI to do work on a task while I'm busy with something else and come back later I've doubled my cost because the cache expires too quickly?
- chamsom 2mo ago
  As a driver I want to spend the majority of the day optimizing my truck's gasoline usage so that I can focus on optimizing my productivity for an outcome I am too far disconnected from to care about anymore.
- datakan 2mo ago
  The AI is so super intelligent that it can't optimize itself and instead burns through tokens needlessly. The people programming the AI are so good that they can write long winded articles about how to optimize their AI but can't get the AI to do these things by default. It's all so tiring. I care less and less about Claude every single day because of the usage caps and the constant optimizing that has to be done. The whole point of AI was to get past this type of bullshit. They've failed miserably at their jobs.
  - StilesCrisis 2mo ago
    Three years ago, a computer that can write working C++ on the first try would have been considered to be a miracle. It's amazing how quickly the goalposts move.
    - qaq 2mo ago
      Dario with his "country of geniuses in a datacenter" talk is pretty instrumental in accelerating that
    - HappMacDonald 2mo ago
      I mean `printf("printf(\"Hello World!\\n\")");`, so...
aleksiy123 2mo ago
Is it possible to have some kind of script to keep your cache warm, or auto compact or something. I sometimes just leave some goals or something running before I go to bed or out and I don’t want to pay the cache text when I come back.
- cube00 2mo ago
  If everyone does it they lose the memory savings they're getting by expiring the cache.
  - 8note 2mo ago
    which is to say that they set their ttl too short, it should be longer than people spend at lunch
BeetleB 2mo ago
> @-mention files instead of naming them. The file gets attached to your message directly, which saves a Read call, or a search if Claude has to go find it. I've heard it argued that this is an antipattern. If the file is large, it will read the whole file. With Read or something similar, it can do a targeted search and read only the relevant portion. Is this still not the case? Also, since they mention /context: Can anyone explain why /context takes so long to run? It usually takes several seconds, and I've had cases of it taking over a minute. And why don't they just show the basics in a status line somewhere? Just a plain: "120K/200K tokens" I hate having to type /context just to get this. And I shouldn't need to install an extension.
- rhaksw 2mo ago
  > I've heard it argued that this is an antipattern. If the file is large, it will read the whole file. With Read or something similar, it can do a targeted search and read only the relevant portion. I suspect you're right and that's why they haven't fixed @-search in the desktop app. I actually don't find myself using it anymore since moving to the desktop app. I went from using various AI extensions in the IDE to Claude Code desktop. But if that's accurate, why mention it in this post? Maybe because that's the first thing developers will try when moving away from a code editor?
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
- sadfgknerknksdf 2mo ago
  You can make your own status line with something like "120K/200K Fable 5", it's nice.
  - 9dev 2mo ago
    You can do tons more, really. There’s even a built-in /statusline command to modify it; mine shows both context window usage alongside session and weekly limit, all of them as progress bars. Just ask Claude to do it.
ahurmazda 2mo ago
What’s the point of running /clear vs starting a brand new session. At least with the latter I have session history, no? Pardon my ignorance since Claude isn’t my primary driver
- mikeocool 2mo ago
  As far as I've seen /clear is the same thing as starting a new session. If you type /resume right after clear, the first thing in the list is the session you just cleared.
  - atsaloli 2mo ago
    True. Some versions of Claude Code had memory leaks. Therefore or was better to exit Claude Code and start a new session rather than /clear.
- andai 2mo ago
  Not 100% sure what clear does, but starting a new session invalidates the cache*, whereas I assume clear only removes part of the context, so it should be cheaper and faster. * In theory the system prompt is always the same and should therefore be cached, but in practice there's some dynamic strings in there so it doesn't work that way. (Unless they changed this recently.)
- g4cg54g54 2mo ago
  Its all lies anyhow: - https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/47756 https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/47756 > [BUG] /clear bleeds into the next session (what also breaks cache) - https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/47098 https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/47098 > [BUG] new sessions will *never* hit a (full)cache
apercu 2mo ago
I didn't read the whole thing, but I got my back up at the headline and my first reaction is now even the "AI" companies are telling you that "you're holding it wrong". I mean, they told us "just talk naturally to the AI because it's so much smarter than all you meatbags" and now it's “for best results, please learn to manage context windows, prompt caching, cache invalidation, model switching, output verbosity and when to manually clear or compact your session.” I get it, but it seems like the "PRODUCT" should be doing this shit. I.e., the PRODUCT is getting less efficient because I didn't manually manage its context correctly and now it's MY fault. Edit: i.e., for e.g. Doh. Even the robots get that right. Sigh.
- DangitBobby 2mo ago
  There is no shortage of literature on how to communicate effectively with real people.
  - apercu 2mo ago
    I'm doing my best to interpret your comment but if I parse it it seems like you think my complaint is "I shouldn't have to express myself clearly" when really its "Why am I being asked to understand and manually manage the implementation details of the product in order to keep it working efficiently?". Unless I am fully not understanding your comment and you don't actually mean “humans require communication skills too” which in honesty feels orthogonal to my complaint.
    - DangitBobby 2mo ago
      > I mean, they told us "just talk naturally to the AI because it's so much smarter than all you meatbags" and now it's “for best results, please learn to manage context windows, prompt caching, cache invalidation, model switching, output verbosity and when to manually clear or compact your session.” It's true both that it can be smarter than all us meat bags and that talking to it a certain way gets better results. On some of the things it's a limitation of the technology and on some of the others it's just how information and effort work in any context. I don't see it as orthogonal to your complaint, I see your complaint as misplaced frustration, like Anthropic invented GIGO and compute so they'd have an excuse to write a blog post.
pzo 2mo ago
> Set your model and effort level before you start. Changing either one mid-conversation can bust your prompt cache, which can increase token cost. I know we supposed to do this but is there any particular reason why such things cannot be supported? I thought its running on same model just different settings like reasoning. This would be super useful.
- deleted 2mo ago
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andai 2mo ago
Austerity on tap!
query_ilands 2mo ago
[flagged]
superasn 2mo ago
Recently I came across the /handoff skill, which I've been using a lot. I find it much better than /compact. Basically: - /handoff file creates a short document with the important context from your current session and maybe next steps as checklist. - You can then start a fresh session with /continue file - You can also hand the work from Claude to ChatGPT, or the other way around. Very useful at time of session limits. - Plus your handoff files becomes a useful piece of project memory that you can reference later. I find this much more useful than /compact or /clear because the context is saved in something portable instead of being tied to one session and i've seen better results doing this every 20 messages or so than running long sessions.
- ls612 2mo ago
  I have been doing this a lot even without a skill, having Fable write a planning document, then spawning an Opus subagent with instructions to strictly follow the plan and report any deviance at the end. It also helps that then the plan is always saved in an md file so any future agent can look at it and see what happened.
  - CBLT 2mo ago
    Interestingly, this was tackled in this blog post[0] a month ago. They claim that plan files aren't token-efficient, because after reading the plan the workhorse model then reads all the relevant files anyways. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48916512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48916512
    - hombre_fatal 2mo ago
      That link just says the planning stage should vet the idea concretely so that the plan focuses on a solution that won’t immediately have to pivot. And I think plan files should focus on general ideas and invariants, not do “implementation as prose”. That way they perform as mini-ADRs that are useful historically, especially to mine why the system is the way it is.
    - inopinatus 2mo ago
dude250711 2mo ago
"TL;DR ..." If only they had some kind of technology that could make a judgement and automate those actions...
- grey-area 2mo ago
  Well, they claim it is capable of such tasks, but in reality, it can’t reliably do so, or they would address them.
wjakob 2mo ago
When rewinding to an earlier turn, what if that turn is more than 1hr old? Can this cause KV-cache misses compared to continuing the conversation?
Shorn 2mo ago
No RSS feed for their blog.
- moebrowne 2mo ago
  Nope, but there are unofficial ones: https://github.com/taobojlen/anthropic-rss-feed/tree/main https://github.com/taobojlen/anthropic-rss-feed/tree/main
8note 2mo ago
how many times it stays there i think doesnt give the best comparison if youre working on the same codebase, that cache stays quite relevant, and i dont think they make the case that clearing and reading the same couple files over and over again is cheaper that relying on it already being cached. same with doing some of the same teaching claude the right way to approach changes in that codebase again and again. what would be nice is pulling back and reusing an earlier part of the cache for the later two tasks, but claude code doesnt make that particularly easy, and using an LLM to pick where to go back to isnt really gonna save much when it reads all the same text again.
docheinestages 2mo ago
Anthropic should build a harness (and model) that smartly takes care of all these points. Not requiring the user to do the manual work. All I see are excuses because they cannot handle the load and enforce strict quotas on users, all while OpenAI constantly resets their quotas. With Qwen 3.8 27B, we're one step closer to on-device LLMs that can replace subscriptions.
- Petersipoi 2mo ago
  The amount that OpenAI resets their quotas is nuts. It's like, every 2 days I swear. Feels so fucking good. Whenever I think about switching my $200 plan back to Claude for a month I'm reminded that they still have a 5 hour usage limit, which feels so absurd now that I've used Codex for a couple of months.
zmmmmm 2mo ago
What I want is a version of `/clear` that keeps the conversation but drops out things like bloated logs, error traces, etc that were only relevant in the immediate local context. I guess compacting somewhat does that but I want something more explicitly that trims out these extremely bloated artefacts while maintaining in full the actual conversation history.
- hetspookjee 2mo ago
  Create a skill for this that you can invoke a new session in referencing your previous session id. Your instructions here read clear enough it seems to create it. Though a handover skill with this kind of behaviour in the same session might be more economical given the cache materials is already there.
- dizhn 2mo ago
  Wouldn't that context with gaps where the output should be confuse the agent too much? At the very least they should be replaced with an explanation that sections were redacted. Otherwise I am imagining the agent will think the commando failed or it won't know how it fixed something.
- StilesCrisis 2mo ago
  /handoff
dpkirchner 2mo ago
TIL the prompt cache lasts 1 hour. I thought it was reduced to 5 minutes.
- moebrowne 2mo ago
  It depends. If you have a Claude Code subscription then it defaults to an hour, if you use Claude via an API or third party then it defaults to 5 minutes. You can opt-in to the 1 hour TTL but it obviously costs more. > 5-minute cache write tokens are 1.25 times the base input tokens price > 1-hour cache write tokens are 2 times the base input tokens price https://code.claude.com/docs/en/prompt-caching#on-a-claude-subscription https://code.claude.com/docs/en/prompt-caching#on-a-claude-s... https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/prompt-caching#pricing https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/prompt...
- swingboy 2mo ago
  I think it depends on your subscription? I just have the 20$ and the cache is only 5 minutes. I’ve got the timer in my status line via ccstatusline and unless it is wrong, it says 5 minutes.
swingboy 2mo ago
How about Anthropic just be more generous with their usage limits instead?
NamlchakKhandro 2mo ago
meah Claude is peak trash. Really fucking upset that they ban you for using a superior harness
wongallen010 2mo ago
[flagged]
fwlr 2mo ago
Until pretty recently, the tools you wrote code with were a flat fee (or free) … [so] an individual task didn't really have a price of its own … [but] with agentic coding tools like Claude Code, it does. I’ve heard this anti-AI thesis before, but it’s certainly novel to read it on “claude.com”.
- DANmode 2mo ago
  It’s pro. They believe you’ll be happy to assign a cost of cents per task, because of the implied number of additional tasks you’ll be able to finish.
myshapeprotocol 2mo ago
[flagged]
- ChrisGreenHeur 2mo ago
  Is this comment written by ai?
  - binarymax 2mo ago
    Yeah and their comment history is full of it.
dmzxnico 2mo ago
[flagged]
tizerluo 2mo ago
[flagged]
lovasoa 2mo ago
I don't understand why changing effort levels busts the cache. Couldn't effort levels be a decoding-only thing where they just change the probability of the <end of thought> token? Are they literally adding a hidden system prompt that says "effort level: $level" ?
- Traubenfuchs 2mo ago
  Obviously it‘s something being put in the context that can not be taken out of it anymore.
- Philpax 2mo ago
  > Are they literally adding a hidden system prompt that says "effort level: $level" ? Yes. https://magazine.sebastianraschka.com/p/controlling-reasoning-effort-in-llms https://magazine.sebastianraschka.com/p/controlling-reasonin...
- namjh 2mo ago
  In that way the autoregressive nature of LLM won't let itself "plan" to reason with the intended budget. It doesn't "look ahead".
pitiflautico 2mo ago
[flagged]
maCDzP 2mo ago
I have had some success with using Ollama cloud and just instructing Claude Code to hand off tasks to Ollama because of tokens economics.
arakas4488 2mo ago
[flagged]
Amekedl 2mo ago
thinking output would be a good start
mojuba 2mo ago
This is all good to know, but funny how we are suddenly back to formal languages and commands. Aren't these things intelligent enough to figure these things out for us?
- cactusplant7374 2mo ago
  Codex is at least. The length of my prompts have decreased over time. Mostly I point it to relevant examples that already exist. It knows the drill.
alekstret 2mo ago
Here is my working flow, confirmed by more than 400 pr merged over the last 4 months. More than half of them were following my current strategy: 1. My agent writes code. 2. Then it creates tests and verifies that all of them actually work, not just pass. To do this, my agent writes the test, then it deletes the code it covers, reruns the test, confirms it goes red, and finally puts the code back. 3. I receive the ready-to-test code and environment setup. 4. I check that the business logic works as I expected it to be on a working product. Here we usually do several iterations of coding and bug fixing. 5. When the manual part is finished, the agent starts an external review using /code review skill. At that stage, it makes some additional fixes and corrections to the tests. 6. Finally, a branch is ready to be merged. We start CI/CD and wait until the run finishes successfully. That's what I actually use because it generally works. Note about only docs PRs: I just ask the agent to make the changes, then it runs the / code review skill, and then we merge the branch into main without CI running.
- AlfeG 2mo ago
  I tend to do code review in separate session. So that context is not affecting judgments.
- ultrasandwich 2mo ago
  > To do this, my agent writes the test, then it deletes the code it covers, reruns the test, confirms it goes red, and finally puts the code back. Why? Are you aware of red/green/refactor?
  - andned 2mo ago
    no op but the tests shouldn't fail on a missing import. it proves nothing. I think what he means is that he makes sure that the test don't pass on testing something else pre-existing. i'm also struggling with vibe coded tests, sometimes they just test for random irrelevant stuff
  - alekstret 2mo ago
    [dead]
- 2mo ago
tosh 2mo ago
high leverage for most agents: - review system prompt + cut it down or remove completely - review agents.md file(s), check which ones are loaded, remove or improve them - review context spam from tools, skills etc, de-activate all, see what needs re-adding - review past sessions to see where tokens get wasted more advanced: - keep sessions short (be conscious about compaction) - form a habit of starting new sessions - deliberately practice how to effectively get the right context into a new session (vs hanging on to a 'good' session) - you can ask the agent to write the essential context into a .md file and have the new session read that - learn about forking sessions - experiment with starting sessions from a custom-built history/context a good agents.md file can be small and still effective re helping the agent navigate the code base that said: you will surprised by how well current models can navigate (way better than last year!)
ermantrout 2mo ago
[flagged]
brachkow 2mo ago
Considering that I'm mostly unable to reach the limit of my X5 subscription and we have 1M context, it is a guide to maximize Anthropic PnL pre-IPO
- ramraj07 2mo ago
  This very much applies to most enterprises. These unlimited subscriptions are only available to individuals and teams less than 150 folks..
  - brachkow 2mo ago
    API is highly overpriced and keeps Anthropic profitable or at least close to break even, as was reported recently. Why would you think they will be interested in advising enterprises in cutting their bills pre-IPO?
second_brain2 2mo ago
bookmarked this
AbstractH24 2mo ago
Most of this I was aware of, but it underscores a tension between things I want to see and things I want to model to think of. Would be nice if it was easier to separate output that needs to live in context and stuff I just want to look at. One thing I wasn’t aware of was the negative impact of switching models
Blackstark 2mo ago
[flagged]
velsoff 2mo ago
[flagged]

319 points by twapi 2mo ago

After having used Codex for a promotional month, and now using Claude, Claude is not as efficient with finding relevant information. I can give it the one file it should be using and then it goes off and greps parent directories for more context. It’s also incredibly slow at producing results because of this side work. In this article, it seems like they are catching up to what GitHub copilot users had already been doing since the cost restructuring in June.

apt-apt-apt-apt 2mo ago

I'm finding that unexpected cache rewrites cost me huge. I have 1h cache TTL set, and do nothing to cause rewrite (response in time, no model/effort/tool changes). At 400K tokens in, I'll write a message, and /usage shows only a small increase in cache write. On the next message, cache writes shows 800K, and by the end, I often hit 2M cache writes with no explanation. This seems to happen when: using /btw, asking it to review code, other random times. Anyone know what's going on?

AlexErrant 2mo ago
To not answer your question, I have a claude stop hook that my status line uses to tell me how close my cache is to expiring https://pastebin.com/JLXUG16Q https://pastebin.com/JLXUG16Q _entirely_ vibecoded don't @ me.
radlad 2mo ago
I have long suspected but not confirmed that /btw uses a lower tier model like Haiku. Depending on how you're triggering reviews, you may be using a sub-agent?
- apt-apt-apt-apt 2mo ago
  I don't use sub-agents, only the normal linear message-response flow.
- crthpl 2mo ago
  it does not use haiku. you can just ask Claude (possibly not fable BC of cyber) to reverse engineer the obfuscated JS.
  - StilesCrisis 2mo ago
    I've had Opus refuse to do work due to cybersecurity concerns as well. Quite frustrating when you're trying to fix an exploit--as soon as it reads the bad code, it just shuts down! I ended up cutting out more and more bits of the code until eventually Opus relented.
Esras 2mo ago
You may be running into a "known" bug with Claude Code: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/63930 https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/63930
- apt-apt-apt-apt 2mo ago
  This happens all the time and drives me bananas. It seems to be regular file edits rather than parallel tool calls. I'm sitting on 1.6m cache write even now with 468k in /context. It drives my session costs above $100 regularly. Can someone from Anthropic look into this?
  - Phemist 2mo ago
    Incentives to optimize cache-usage are only aligned between anthropic and you, dear user, when there is not enough compute available to serve the tokens fresh. Apparently enough compute is now available that frugal usage is no longer a requirement and user cost/profit maximization is now the name of the game. I would expect to see more and more "cache-busting" strategies implemented in order to both eek out marginal performance increases and to heavily increase profit.

tolugenius 2mo ago

Part of the cynic in me just wants to ask "why not make a better harness by default?" The other cynic in me knows I'm about to see a hundred post on 'HOW TO 10X CLAUDE" from the ai bros and I'm already tired. I guess if I had to ask something (as someone who doesn't use CC as their daily driver), how much control do you have on subagents and roughly how do define or know when a session is getting too long? I know the answer is "when the model is getting worse" but worse is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence.

nathanyz 2mo ago
Yeah, I sort of feel like they could just do this in Claude Code for us in some way. I mean they already run some mini classifier on whether a given prompt is waiting on input, so they could do the same to detect some of these cases, and just handle it. If you have to explain that someone is "holding it wrong"(1), that is product error, not a user error. (1) https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/ https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/
fg137 2mo ago
> "why not make a better harness by default?" Especially the /compact part. Like, if a session has been idle for 55 min, why not just automatically run compact at that point?

mccoyb 2mo ago

I mean, it feels hard not to laugh at this type of blog post. My cynical interpretation is that this is a type of passing the buck to engineers in enterprise settings ("Stop spending tokens. Did you read the value maximization blog post? It is your fault.") Oh yes, Claude will do all sorts of different things -- it depends on how you use it! You should totally learn all of these little finicky things ... because now completing your tasks cost money. It's not "free" anymore haha like when you used your old text editor, what are you a grandpa? Oh, and those things will definitely change, as we (the priests of Claude) are vibe coding the system you use to do your little "tasks" ... right, you can't see how it works ... the code is not available. It's all good, just trust us -- we're totally looking out for you. I mean it is utterly ridiculous to talk around this model of development. There are so many walls between you and doing the thing you want to do. Agents are great, but the notion of "best tricks" for how to best use an opaque costful tool which will, by all odds, be completely different in a few months time is quite funny. You know what won't change? A fucking text editor. Or your pi config, or a local model you run and trust.

csallen 2mo ago
I'm trying to understand your point of view, but it kind of just sounds like you're against learning how to use tools efficiently? I mean, agentic coding software is hardly the first tool to exist where learning some idiosyncrasies of how to use it well can result in more efficiency and cost savings.
- mccoyb 2mo ago
  It's very easy to understand: - I'm happy to learn how to use tools efficiently - I like to be able to inspect my tools - I'm against tools changing underneath me Are you against any of these points?
  - csallen 2mo ago
    I think I'm happy about the first two. The third I suppose I care less about, just because I've kind of become used to it from decades working on the internet where many businesses/tools/apps are more like services and less like physical tools that never change.

NoDodgeQuestion 2mo ago

Bro: superintelligent machine line go up AI AGI software solved automate everything Also bro: Run /clearbetween tasks. This prevents prior irrelevant context from being sent back to the model, which can reduce token usage. Set your model and effort level before you start. Changing either one mid-conversation can bust your prompt cache, which can increase token cost. @-mention files instead of naming them. The file gets attached to your message directly, which saves a Read call, or a search if Claude has to go find it. Add quiet flags to noisy commands, or run them in a subagent. Command output is added to the conversation just like a file, and stays there for the rest of the session. Run /context once in a fresh session. It shows what's loaded (CLAUDE.md, MCP tool definitions), so you can cut out anything unnecessary. /compact before you take a break from your keyboard. The prompt cache expires after an hour, and summarizing a conversation is much cheaper while it's still cached.

NoDodgeQuestion 2mo ago
Author not bro, sorry misgender
- pdpi 2mo ago
  I'd argue that women can be bros too, especially when using the word in this sense.
  - runeblaze 2mo ago
    puts on my etiquette hat don’t do that, it is weird, use “bruh” or “dude”
  - NamlchakKhandro 2mo ago
    There are no women on the internet. I remember when the internet was an exchange of ideas instead of using gender to justify value of bad ideas
- cyber_kinetist 2mo ago
  It has been a while since bro has become a gender-neutral term, particularly in younger circles...

jnwatson 2mo ago

Can anyone explain why the prefix cache is tied to effort? I frequently run Fable at xhigh effort to run statistical modeling way above my undergraduate understanding. Claude Fable produces Masters-degree level output, and then I spend lots of round trips asking it to explain different parts to me. The first part absolutely uses the extra effort, but the interrogation exercise is something a much simpler model, or the same model with much less effort, could answer.

hellohello2 2mo ago
One trick is to simply as for a fast answer when talking to a high effort model, when working interactively. Sounds stupid but I do this all the time and it works. Just tell it you are working interactively now and need ultrafast answers with no thinking. I would be really curious to know as well, why effort is linked to cache as its quite inconveniant. Is it possible the token used to indicate effort is only passed once at the start, not per thinking trace, or quite simply that different efforts have different model weights?
janalsncm 2mo ago
I’m guessing that there’s a system prompt at the top telling the model about its reasoning budget. So when you switch reasoning effort it busts the cache.
- foota 2mo ago
  Hmmm... Why wouldn't this be handled like other end of prompt things like the current mode?
  - janalsncm 2mo ago
    Prompt caching only works based on the prefix. Let’s call your output Y and the low reasoning prompt A and a medium reasoning prompt B. Previously you were at A+Y. Switching to medium reasoning makes it B+Y. There’s no prefix which can be cached, so the entire B+Y needs to be reprocessed.

PeterStuer 2mo ago

I do all that, but an 'AS-BUILT' full review of my project still eats 3x my 5 hour budget on max 100€. Meanwhile, my 20€ GPT never hit a limit. Different, but just saying.

nathanyz 2mo ago

This feels like the Anthropic version of "You're holding it wrong" (1) 1) https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/ https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

agumonkey 2mo ago
It feels worse. It's all noob level suggestions that any decent system would have optimized away already.
onlyrealcuzzo 2mo ago
Step 1: use a different LLM that isn't 10x slower and 2-5x more expensive for the same level of quality.

bytestrix 2mo ago

do people use the Caveman, RTK plugins

gavmor 2mo ago
My agent didn't like it. Indirection causing noise and failure outweighed the token savings. https://regular-reviews.pages.dev/rtk https://regular-reviews.pages.dev/rtk
guessmyname 2mo ago
No, because it is useless. • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49080605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49080605 (JetBrains, Does Speaking to Agents Like Cavemen Save 65% of Tokens? We Test) • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48588755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48588755 (The Token Compression Illusion: Why I'm Skeptical of RTK )
- ed_mercer 2mo ago
  If it can save 10% of tokens, how is that useless?

rhaksw 2mo ago

> @-mention files instead of naming them Love Claude, but the @ mention is broken in the desktop app. For the same project if I type the same query "@ephem" I get: CLI: https://imgur.com/a/VZMUCOa https://imgur.com/a/VZMUCOa (good, relevant results) Desktop: https://imgur.com/a/QLSo4Ms https://imgur.com/a/QLSo4Ms (bad, irrelevant) Opened issue for this and it was automatically closed: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/71421 https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/71421 I could have written the issue better (using CLI as comparison instead of VS Code). But, no doubt in my mind Claude could fix this itself in a minute.

guessmyname 2mo ago
> Opened issue for this and it was automatically closed: […] Clarification: It wasn’t closed on submission though. It sat open ~17 days, a bot marked it stale, and it closed when nobody responded to the stale label. The two-phase thing is the part I didn’t know until recently: the stale label is basically asking “is this still relevant?”, and answering it makes the bot back off next time around. nixpkgs does the same. Bumping feels wrong on most trackers, agreed, but at this issue volume I don’t know what else works. Anyway a comment should reopen it. Your CLI vs desktop screenshots are a better repro than most things in that tracker.
- Banditoz 2mo ago
  Just because a Github issue doesn't have activity doesn't mean it's not an issue anymore.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
- kristjansson 2mo ago
  the norms of issue trackers are strongly opposed to “bump”. these autoclose bots may yet change that
  - 2mo ago

Glyptodon 2mo ago

What I see is that I have to read a bunch of stuff and go through a bunch of hassle to save money when the root of it is that if I tell an AI to do work on a task while I'm busy with something else and come back later I've doubled my cost because the cache expires too quickly?

chamsom 2mo ago
As a driver I want to spend the majority of the day optimizing my truck's gasoline usage so that I can focus on optimizing my productivity for an outcome I am too far disconnected from to care about anymore.
datakan 2mo ago
The AI is so super intelligent that it can't optimize itself and instead burns through tokens needlessly. The people programming the AI are so good that they can write long winded articles about how to optimize their AI but can't get the AI to do these things by default. It's all so tiring. I care less and less about Claude every single day because of the usage caps and the constant optimizing that has to be done. The whole point of AI was to get past this type of bullshit. They've failed miserably at their jobs.
- StilesCrisis 2mo ago
  Three years ago, a computer that can write working C++ on the first try would have been considered to be a miracle. It's amazing how quickly the goalposts move.
  - qaq 2mo ago
    Dario with his "country of geniuses in a datacenter" talk is pretty instrumental in accelerating that
  - HappMacDonald 2mo ago
    I mean `printf("printf(\"Hello World!\\n\")");`, so...

aleksiy123 2mo ago

Is it possible to have some kind of script to keep your cache warm, or auto compact or something. I sometimes just leave some goals or something running before I go to bed or out and I don’t want to pay the cache text when I come back.

cube00 2mo ago
If everyone does it they lose the memory savings they're getting by expiring the cache.
- 8note 2mo ago
  which is to say that they set their ttl too short, it should be longer than people spend at lunch

BeetleB 2mo ago

> @-mention files instead of naming them. The file gets attached to your message directly, which saves a Read call, or a search if Claude has to go find it. I've heard it argued that this is an antipattern. If the file is large, it will read the whole file. With Read or something similar, it can do a targeted search and read only the relevant portion. Is this still not the case? Also, since they mention /context: Can anyone explain why /context takes so long to run? It usually takes several seconds, and I've had cases of it taking over a minute. And why don't they just show the basics in a status line somewhere? Just a plain: "120K/200K tokens" I hate having to type /context just to get this. And I shouldn't need to install an extension.

rhaksw 2mo ago
> I've heard it argued that this is an antipattern. If the file is large, it will read the whole file. With Read or something similar, it can do a targeted search and read only the relevant portion. I suspect you're right and that's why they haven't fixed @-search in the desktop app. I actually don't find myself using it anymore since moving to the desktop app. I went from using various AI extensions in the IDE to Claude Code desktop. But if that's accurate, why mention it in this post? Maybe because that's the first thing developers will try when moving away from a code editor?
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
sadfgknerknksdf 2mo ago
You can make your own status line with something like "120K/200K Fable 5", it's nice.
- 9dev 2mo ago
  You can do tons more, really. There’s even a built-in /statusline command to modify it; mine shows both context window usage alongside session and weekly limit, all of them as progress bars. Just ask Claude to do it.

ahurmazda 2mo ago

What’s the point of running /clear vs starting a brand new session. At least with the latter I have session history, no? Pardon my ignorance since Claude isn’t my primary driver

mikeocool 2mo ago
As far as I've seen /clear is the same thing as starting a new session. If you type /resume right after clear, the first thing in the list is the session you just cleared.
- atsaloli 2mo ago
  True. Some versions of Claude Code had memory leaks. Therefore or was better to exit Claude Code and start a new session rather than /clear.
andai 2mo ago
Not 100% sure what clear does, but starting a new session invalidates the cache*, whereas I assume clear only removes part of the context, so it should be cheaper and faster. * In theory the system prompt is always the same and should therefore be cached, but in practice there's some dynamic strings in there so it doesn't work that way. (Unless they changed this recently.)
g4cg54g54 2mo ago
Its all lies anyhow: - https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/47756 https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/47756 > [BUG] /clear bleeds into the next session (what also breaks cache) - https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/47098 https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/47098 > [BUG] new sessions will *never* hit a (full)cache

apercu 2mo ago

I didn't read the whole thing, but I got my back up at the headline and my first reaction is now even the "AI" companies are telling you that "you're holding it wrong". I mean, they told us "just talk naturally to the AI because it's so much smarter than all you meatbags" and now it's “for best results, please learn to manage context windows, prompt caching, cache invalidation, model switching, output verbosity and when to manually clear or compact your session.” I get it, but it seems like the "PRODUCT" should be doing this shit. I.e., the PRODUCT is getting less efficient because I didn't manually manage its context correctly and now it's MY fault. Edit: i.e., for e.g. Doh. Even the robots get that right. Sigh.

DangitBobby 2mo ago
There is no shortage of literature on how to communicate effectively with real people.
- apercu 2mo ago
  I'm doing my best to interpret your comment but if I parse it it seems like you think my complaint is "I shouldn't have to express myself clearly" when really its "Why am I being asked to understand and manually manage the implementation details of the product in order to keep it working efficiently?". Unless I am fully not understanding your comment and you don't actually mean “humans require communication skills too” which in honesty feels orthogonal to my complaint.
  - DangitBobby 2mo ago
    > I mean, they told us "just talk naturally to the AI because it's so much smarter than all you meatbags" and now it's “for best results, please learn to manage context windows, prompt caching, cache invalidation, model switching, output verbosity and when to manually clear or compact your session.” It's true both that it can be smarter than all us meat bags and that talking to it a certain way gets better results. On some of the things it's a limitation of the technology and on some of the others it's just how information and effort work in any context. I don't see it as orthogonal to your complaint, I see your complaint as misplaced frustration, like Anthropic invented GIGO and compute so they'd have an excuse to write a blog post.

pzo 2mo ago

> Set your model and effort level before you start. Changing either one mid-conversation can bust your prompt cache, which can increase token cost. I know we supposed to do this but is there any particular reason why such things cannot be supported? I thought its running on same model just different settings like reasoning. This would be super useful.

deleted 2mo ago
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andai 2mo ago

Austerity on tap!

query_ilands 2mo ago

[flagged]

superasn 2mo ago

Recently I came across the /handoff skill, which I've been using a lot. I find it much better than /compact. Basically: - /handoff file creates a short document with the important context from your current session and maybe next steps as checklist. - You can then start a fresh session with /continue file - You can also hand the work from Claude to ChatGPT, or the other way around. Very useful at time of session limits. - Plus your handoff files becomes a useful piece of project memory that you can reference later. I find this much more useful than /compact or /clear because the context is saved in something portable instead of being tied to one session and i've seen better results doing this every 20 messages or so than running long sessions.

ls612 2mo ago
I have been doing this a lot even without a skill, having Fable write a planning document, then spawning an Opus subagent with instructions to strictly follow the plan and report any deviance at the end. It also helps that then the plan is always saved in an md file so any future agent can look at it and see what happened.
- CBLT 2mo ago
  Interestingly, this was tackled in this blog post[0] a month ago. They claim that plan files aren't token-efficient, because after reading the plan the workhorse model then reads all the relevant files anyways. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48916512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48916512
  - hombre_fatal 2mo ago
    That link just says the planning stage should vet the idea concretely so that the plan focuses on a solution that won’t immediately have to pivot. And I think plan files should focus on general ideas and invariants, not do “implementation as prose”. That way they perform as mini-ADRs that are useful historically, especially to mine why the system is the way it is.
  - inopinatus 2mo ago

dude250711 2mo ago

"TL;DR ..." If only they had some kind of technology that could make a judgement and automate those actions...

grey-area 2mo ago
Well, they claim it is capable of such tasks, but in reality, it can’t reliably do so, or they would address them.

wjakob 2mo ago

When rewinding to an earlier turn, what if that turn is more than 1hr old? Can this cause KV-cache misses compared to continuing the conversation?

Shorn 2mo ago

No RSS feed for their blog.

moebrowne 2mo ago
Nope, but there are unofficial ones: https://github.com/taobojlen/anthropic-rss-feed/tree/main https://github.com/taobojlen/anthropic-rss-feed/tree/main

8note 2mo ago

how many times it stays there i think doesnt give the best comparison if youre working on the same codebase, that cache stays quite relevant, and i dont think they make the case that clearing and reading the same couple files over and over again is cheaper that relying on it already being cached. same with doing some of the same teaching claude the right way to approach changes in that codebase again and again. what would be nice is pulling back and reusing an earlier part of the cache for the later two tasks, but claude code doesnt make that particularly easy, and using an LLM to pick where to go back to isnt really gonna save much when it reads all the same text again.

docheinestages 2mo ago

Anthropic should build a harness (and model) that smartly takes care of all these points. Not requiring the user to do the manual work. All I see are excuses because they cannot handle the load and enforce strict quotas on users, all while OpenAI constantly resets their quotas. With Qwen 3.8 27B, we're one step closer to on-device LLMs that can replace subscriptions.

Petersipoi 2mo ago
The amount that OpenAI resets their quotas is nuts. It's like, every 2 days I swear. Feels so fucking good. Whenever I think about switching my $200 plan back to Claude for a month I'm reminded that they still have a 5 hour usage limit, which feels so absurd now that I've used Codex for a couple of months.

zmmmmm 2mo ago

What I want is a version of `/clear` that keeps the conversation but drops out things like bloated logs, error traces, etc that were only relevant in the immediate local context. I guess compacting somewhat does that but I want something more explicitly that trims out these extremely bloated artefacts while maintaining in full the actual conversation history.

hetspookjee 2mo ago
Create a skill for this that you can invoke a new session in referencing your previous session id. Your instructions here read clear enough it seems to create it. Though a handover skill with this kind of behaviour in the same session might be more economical given the cache materials is already there.
dizhn 2mo ago
Wouldn't that context with gaps where the output should be confuse the agent too much? At the very least they should be replaced with an explanation that sections were redacted. Otherwise I am imagining the agent will think the commando failed or it won't know how it fixed something.
StilesCrisis 2mo ago
/handoff

dpkirchner 2mo ago

TIL the prompt cache lasts 1 hour. I thought it was reduced to 5 minutes.

moebrowne 2mo ago
It depends. If you have a Claude Code subscription then it defaults to an hour, if you use Claude via an API or third party then it defaults to 5 minutes. You can opt-in to the 1 hour TTL but it obviously costs more. > 5-minute cache write tokens are 1.25 times the base input tokens price > 1-hour cache write tokens are 2 times the base input tokens price https://code.claude.com/docs/en/prompt-caching#on-a-claude-subscription https://code.claude.com/docs/en/prompt-caching#on-a-claude-s... https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/prompt-caching#pricing https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/build-with-claude/prompt...
swingboy 2mo ago
I think it depends on your subscription? I just have the 20$ and the cache is only 5 minutes. I’ve got the timer in my status line via ccstatusline and unless it is wrong, it says 5 minutes.

swingboy 2mo ago

How about Anthropic just be more generous with their usage limits instead?

NamlchakKhandro 2mo ago

meah Claude is peak trash. Really fucking upset that they ban you for using a superior harness

wongallen010 2mo ago

[flagged]

fwlr 2mo ago

Until pretty recently, the tools you wrote code with were a flat fee (or free) … [so] an individual task didn't really have a price of its own … [but] with agentic coding tools like Claude Code, it does. I’ve heard this anti-AI thesis before, but it’s certainly novel to read it on “claude.com”.

DANmode 2mo ago
It’s pro. They believe you’ll be happy to assign a cost of cents per task, because of the implied number of additional tasks you’ll be able to finish.

myshapeprotocol 2mo ago

[flagged]

ChrisGreenHeur 2mo ago
Is this comment written by ai?
- binarymax 2mo ago
  Yeah and their comment history is full of it.

dmzxnico 2mo ago

[flagged]

tizerluo 2mo ago

[flagged]

lovasoa 2mo ago

I don't understand why changing effort levels busts the cache. Couldn't effort levels be a decoding-only thing where they just change the probability of the <end of thought> token? Are they literally adding a hidden system prompt that says "effort level: $level" ?

Traubenfuchs 2mo ago
Obviously it‘s something being put in the context that can not be taken out of it anymore.
Philpax 2mo ago
> Are they literally adding a hidden system prompt that says "effort level: $level" ? Yes. https://magazine.sebastianraschka.com/p/controlling-reasoning-effort-in-llms https://magazine.sebastianraschka.com/p/controlling-reasonin...
namjh 2mo ago
In that way the autoregressive nature of LLM won't let itself "plan" to reason with the intended budget. It doesn't "look ahead".

pitiflautico 2mo ago

[flagged]

maCDzP 2mo ago

I have had some success with using Ollama cloud and just instructing Claude Code to hand off tasks to Ollama because of tokens economics.

arakas4488 2mo ago

[flagged]

Amekedl 2mo ago

thinking output would be a good start

mojuba 2mo ago

This is all good to know, but funny how we are suddenly back to formal languages and commands. Aren't these things intelligent enough to figure these things out for us?

cactusplant7374 2mo ago
Codex is at least. The length of my prompts have decreased over time. Mostly I point it to relevant examples that already exist. It knows the drill.

alekstret 2mo ago

Here is my working flow, confirmed by more than 400 pr merged over the last 4 months. More than half of them were following my current strategy: 1. My agent writes code. 2. Then it creates tests and verifies that all of them actually work, not just pass. To do this, my agent writes the test, then it deletes the code it covers, reruns the test, confirms it goes red, and finally puts the code back. 3. I receive the ready-to-test code and environment setup. 4. I check that the business logic works as I expected it to be on a working product. Here we usually do several iterations of coding and bug fixing. 5. When the manual part is finished, the agent starts an external review using /code review skill. At that stage, it makes some additional fixes and corrections to the tests. 6. Finally, a branch is ready to be merged. We start CI/CD and wait until the run finishes successfully. That's what I actually use because it generally works. Note about only docs PRs: I just ask the agent to make the changes, then it runs the / code review skill, and then we merge the branch into main without CI running.

AlfeG 2mo ago
I tend to do code review in separate session. So that context is not affecting judgments.
ultrasandwich 2mo ago
> To do this, my agent writes the test, then it deletes the code it covers, reruns the test, confirms it goes red, and finally puts the code back. Why? Are you aware of red/green/refactor?
- andned 2mo ago
  no op but the tests shouldn't fail on a missing import. it proves nothing. I think what he means is that he makes sure that the test don't pass on testing something else pre-existing. i'm also struggling with vibe coded tests, sometimes they just test for random irrelevant stuff
- alekstret 2mo ago
  [dead]
2mo ago

tosh 2mo ago

high leverage for most agents: - review system prompt + cut it down or remove completely - review agents.md file(s), check which ones are loaded, remove or improve them - review context spam from tools, skills etc, de-activate all, see what needs re-adding - review past sessions to see where tokens get wasted more advanced: - keep sessions short (be conscious about compaction) - form a habit of starting new sessions - deliberately practice how to effectively get the right context into a new session (vs hanging on to a 'good' session) - you can ask the agent to write the essential context into a .md file and have the new session read that - learn about forking sessions - experiment with starting sessions from a custom-built history/context a good agents.md file can be small and still effective re helping the agent navigate the code base that said: you will surprised by how well current models can navigate (way better than last year!)

ermantrout 2mo ago

[flagged]

brachkow 2mo ago

Considering that I'm mostly unable to reach the limit of my X5 subscription and we have 1M context, it is a guide to maximize Anthropic PnL pre-IPO

ramraj07 2mo ago
This very much applies to most enterprises. These unlimited subscriptions are only available to individuals and teams less than 150 folks..
- brachkow 2mo ago
  API is highly overpriced and keeps Anthropic profitable or at least close to break even, as was reported recently. Why would you think they will be interested in advising enterprises in cutting their bills pre-IPO?

second_brain2 2mo ago

bookmarked this

AbstractH24 2mo ago

Most of this I was aware of, but it underscores a tension between things I want to see and things I want to model to think of. Would be nice if it was easier to separate output that needs to live in context and stuff I just want to look at. One thing I wasn’t aware of was the negative impact of switching models

Blackstark 2mo ago

[flagged]

velsoff 2mo ago

[flagged]