TLDR: If you are frequently reaching your token usage limits, ask Claude Code to review your recent sessions and tell you why. Each time I have done this it dramatically reduced my token usage. Recently I have seen a lot of posts about token usage. Things like should I have 4 5x accounts or 1 20x account. ChatGPT vs Claude not on which model is better, but which account gives you more tokens, etc. Twice since 9/14 when Anthropic reduced everyone’s token limits (50% bonus boost -> 25%) I noticed a large spike in my token usage. The first time it was right around the time of this reduction, but when I did the “math” in my head, my usage was maxing out a lot faster than what I would have thought based on the percent reduction that was announced. The second time was this week when I hit my weekly limit on day 3 of the week. Thankfully, I had the gifted full reset available to me. Background on my Claude usage: I am a tech leader during the day and code generation is not part of my day job. On the side during evenings and weekends I work on a couple of side projects. In a typical week I rarely hit a 5-hour limit and I almost never use more than 85% of my weekly limit using a 5x account. This week when I saw the meter flying towards 100% on day 3, I knew that something was wrong. I was getting more done than normal, but not 2x more. I have a work loop skill that takes the requirements and design from previous sessions to implement a story, verify that the implementation was complete, and perform a code review on the delta between the branch and main before creating a PR. Somehow it had drifted into a token monster. My prompt to investigate this was pretty simple: Review the token usage in recent previous sessions to determine if I am using tokens efficiently. Specifically focus on the sessions that used the implementation work loop. It found that on average, the final step in my loop was using 450k tokens and that 97% of tokens were re-reading the conversation. Claude made 4 recommendations on what to do about it. With my approval, Claude edited my skills and now my usage is back down to what I would expect. Easy. I hope this helps others in your quest to stay in compliance with the meter overlord. I would love to hear in the discussion how you have fought the token usage battle and what tips and tricks you would suggest. submitted by /u/quietmacbuilder
Originally posted by u/quietmacbuilder on r/ClaudeCode
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