I’m pretty new to coding and have been using Claude a lot for projects, automations, Claude Code, etc. I keep seeing posts about optimizing project structures, CLAUDE.md files, context management, and all these different ways to reduce token usage. Everyone seems to have a different approach, and as a beginner, I honestly have no idea where to start. But here’s what I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t Anthropic just provide some sort of recommended setup or template that’s already optimized for token efficiency? Obviously every project is different, but surely there are some general best practices. I get that fewer tokens could mean less revenue for Anthropic, but it still seems like a strange dynamic. Apparently there are all these experienced users who know how to drastically reduce token usage, while beginners like me are just burning through usage because we don’t know any better. And I keep coming back to the same question. Why am I trying to figure out how to make Claude more efficient than Claude itself? Shouldn’t Claude be able to look at my project and recommend the most efficient setup? Maybe I’m completely misunderstanding how this works, but I don’t want to spend hours going down rabbit holes trying to optimize things when I have no idea which advice actually matters. Curious what more experienced users think. Am I missing something obvious here? Is all this optimization really necessary, or am I overthinking it? submitted by /u/beeflife
Originally posted by u/beeflife on r/ClaudeCode
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