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Any advice on conserving codex/Claude code tokens?
Posted on 8/27/26 at 5:36 am
Posted on 8/27/26 at 5:36 am
I guess I was so excited about this new found feature that I went after it like a drunken sailor and now I can't do Jack shite.
Is there a strategy or way to structure prompts to better budget how much I'm using?
For AI tools as smart as Claude and chatgpt are they suddenly get real dumb when you ask them anything about how their billing or internal processes work or giving you a live look into active token consumption.
It's almost as if that's by design...
Is there a strategy or way to structure prompts to better budget how much I'm using?
For AI tools as smart as Claude and chatgpt are they suddenly get real dumb when you ask them anything about how their billing or internal processes work or giving you a live look into active token consumption.
It's almost as if that's by design...
This post was edited on 8/27/26 at 5:38 am
7
Posted on 8/27/26 at 7:44 am to CAD703X
I hit my limit with Claude in about 45 minutes, doing stuff I could spend all day in ChatGPT doing with no warnings. So, I told Claude I needed a prompt to have ChatGPT work like Claude was doing for that task. I used the prompt on ChatGPT and it started working just like Claude (not coding based). No more token problems.
Posted on 8/27/26 at 8:33 am to CAD703X
Lower the model level according to the task. I'm using haiku 4.5 for all my smart home/home assistant stuff and it's pennies each time. Also, I use the free version of claude for basic shite and reserve the claude platform for only code-based chats.
Posted on 8/27/26 at 8:44 am to CAD703X
Saving tokens is impossible outside of turning thinking down. Saving your context window is all the rage. For that there is graphify and sub agents.
Personal accounts simply don’t give you enough tokens to get things done, even at $200 per month, unless you schedule your life around the usage windows.
If you want to get things done on your own schedule, you need to move over to openrouter and use mainly deepseek 4 flash or Luna. You can still click over to something more expensive if you get in a bind and never have to leave your coding agent.
Edit: obv context and tokens closely related but there is still no one-size-fits-all trick. Don’t pull datasets directly on small projects. Don’t go into huge repos without graphs. As far as the output tokens, that’s 90% thinking. Maybe more. Don’t allow big think when it doesn’t need it.
Personal accounts simply don’t give you enough tokens to get things done, even at $200 per month, unless you schedule your life around the usage windows.
If you want to get things done on your own schedule, you need to move over to openrouter and use mainly deepseek 4 flash or Luna. You can still click over to something more expensive if you get in a bind and never have to leave your coding agent.
Edit: obv context and tokens closely related but there is still no one-size-fits-all trick. Don’t pull datasets directly on small projects. Don’t go into huge repos without graphs. As far as the output tokens, that’s 90% thinking. Maybe more. Don’t allow big think when it doesn’t need it.
This post was edited on 8/28/26 at 4:05 pm
Posted on 8/27/26 at 10:40 am to CAD703X
I have become very cynical about how LLM's waste tokens by not following instructions, hallucinating, or not doing what you asked of them.
I absolutely have come to believe this is by design to drive up token usage.
This is a product that I pay for, when it doesn't follow instructions and creates mistakes that require further token usage to fix, why should I bear that financial cost.
ETA at work we have Claude Enterprise with a $10K monthly usage limit, I haven't hit that yet, but I routinely go over $2k a month.
I absolutely have come to believe this is by design to drive up token usage.
This is a product that I pay for, when it doesn't follow instructions and creates mistakes that require further token usage to fix, why should I bear that financial cost.
ETA at work we have Claude Enterprise with a $10K monthly usage limit, I haven't hit that yet, but I routinely go over $2k a month.
This post was edited on 8/27/26 at 10:43 am
Posted on 8/27/26 at 10:41 am to CAD703X
Sorry you’ll have to start thinking for yourself again baw
Posted on 8/27/26 at 11:34 am to Chromdome35
quote:i went down a rabbit hole yesterday when my supposedly 'hardened' debian chromium display PC browser crashed in the middle of the night.
I have become very cynical about how LLM's waste tokens by not following instructions, hallucinating, or not doing what you asked of them.
I absolutely have come to believe this is by design to drive up token usage.
rather than chalk it up to a fluke or simply set a task to reboot before the display comes online every morning at 6am, i had codex ssh into the miniPC and spent 2 hours having it run diagnostics, download and scan logs...essentially i let it use all my tokens chasing some invisible issue that was likely no more than a fluke in the first place
AI will happily waste your time and money if you let it.
Posted on 8/27/26 at 11:53 am to CAD703X
quote:
AI will happily waste your time and money if you let it.
It did what you told it to do
Posted on 8/27/26 at 12:44 pm to Mingo Was His NameO
quote:y r u the way u r
what you told it to do
Posted on 8/27/26 at 2:47 pm to LemmyLives
quote:
I hit my limit with Claude in about 45 minutes, doing stuff I could spend all day in ChatGPT doing with no warnings.
I hit my limit today in 15 mins doing the same stuff that i've been doing all week that would last the whole window. I think they fricked with something.
Posted on 8/27/26 at 7:06 pm to CAD703X
I assume you're using standard token minimization strategies such as limiting conversation length, not loading up big data sets, etc...
Posted on 8/27/26 at 10:37 pm to CAD703X
There’s some skills you can load that will help with that. Before I started customizing my Claude, I would run into similar issues. Also, I’ll try and find the prompt I made to cut all that shite out.
Now I’m coding with Claude and I’ve built 3 apps and I can code for a couple hours before I hit a usage limit. I’ll even code and run cowork stuff for my classes or projects I’m working on.
Next thing I’m going to try is connecting Claude with arcGIS.
Now I’m coding with Claude and I’ve built 3 apps and I can code for a couple hours before I hit a usage limit. I’ll even code and run cowork stuff for my classes or projects I’m working on.
Next thing I’m going to try is connecting Claude with arcGIS.
Posted on 8/28/26 at 3:19 pm to Chromdome35
I found my problem. I forgot i switched back down to the pro plan last month. I was paying for less usage. Back to Max.
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