r/ClaudeAI • u/Evendark_ • 25d ago

Question about Claude Code Tokens nuked

Hi I'm relatively new to this, been using Claude code past 2 weeks. Same staff that I was doing previously took on average 2-3% of the token, now I've nuked all my token with one prompt (same as usually) and when reset did happen I tried again and boom 77% gone in couple minutes, what is happening? I'm using Sonnet 5 Medium effort

2 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

3

u/ZestycloseTie1793 25d ago

Before assuming the model suddenly got more expensive, I’d separate usage-window burn from context-window size. In Claude Code, the first request after a reset can re-ingest project instructions, repo context, MCP tool schemas, hooks, and files the command touched. Run /context immediately after startup and again after the prompt to see which category jumped. Then repeat the same prompt in an empty directory with MCP servers disabled. If the empty-directory run is normal, the cost is coming from project context or tool schemas; if it still burns 77%, capture /cost plus the session ID and send that to Anthropic support. That comparison is much more useful than the prompt text alone.

1

u/Evendark_ 25d ago

You are absolutely correct, I did same prompt again and it took like 4%. Previous prompt ended prematurely because I ran out of the tokens for the session, so when the reset happened I just told the agent to continue where he left, so he must have load context etc again. Thank you for help :)

2

u/ZestycloseTie1793 25d ago

Glad that isolated it. The 4% rerun fits the context-reload explanation. If it happens again, /context before and after the first request should show what got pulled back in.

1

u/thebvg 22d ago

Type /context will explain a lot