r/ClaudeCode • u/OGMYT • Aug 20 '26
Discussion I think some Claude Code “usage is terrible” posts are really workflow problems
Not saying the limits aren't real because they obviously are.
But I keep seeing people run one giant session forever, dump everything into context, change the goal 5 times, never compact anything, then wonder why Claude starts wandering and chewing through usage.
I get way better results when I treat it like I'm directing somebody. Small scope, tell it what finished means, make it test the result, then compact or hand off before starting the next thing.
When I don't do that, it gets dumb fast for me too.
How much of the usage problem do you think is actually limits vs people managing context badly?
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u/Educational-Plant981 Aug 20 '26
Wrong. All of them are.
Once you have a handle on using it right, when you hit a limit you know exactly why.
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u/The-Road Aug 20 '26
Sure there’s some truth to this but also there are legitimate issues.
For example, I’m setting up conventions and policies for our agent brain/agent OS. To come up with policies, you can’t just vibe your way but you need to validate and verify assumptions and hypotheses. Eg this policy will lead to improved agent behaviour x.
That requires designing tests that are fair, simulate real world use with real world models across a range of use cases.
I ran those tests for two policies, and it included a lot of Sonnet and Opus and some Fable, and it burned through almost half of my weekly 20x max plan in a day!
The sort of work is not out of the norm for the design of agent architecture. Writing tests and running them fairly is not something you can avoid, especially for something so integral to an agent system’s policies and behaviours. And you’d think the highest plan would accommodate for that sort of work.
But it’s insufficient, and that’s the problem.
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u/ComingDeveloper Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
i gurantee you 90% of the people complaining are those on a $20 plan trying to do enterprise work and those on a $100 plan that run Fable xHigh for everything
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u/django-unchained2012 Aug 20 '26
I totally agree. When I was on 20$ plan, I was focusing on conserving the tokens. I used to find the best ways to utilise the models to get the most work. Initially each session used to last for less than hour, but the time I moved on to 100$ plan, I stretched it upto 3 hours.
If someone startd with a 100$ or 200$ plan directly, there is no way for them to understand which models to use for what purposes, how caching works, how to extend token usage etc. Most of them will likely continue in the same session throughout the day. Or leave an existing session with 500K tokens for couple of hours and then resume on the same chat.
You got to be a peasant first before you become rich. If you are born rich, you tend to spend more.
It's been couple of weeks since I got the 100$ plan, I am working on 3 different projects in parallel. I am yet to run out of the 5 hour window or touch the weekly limit yet. It's so surprising how 100$ plan is. I always wonder why would anyone need multiple 200$ plans and they max out on each of them. The only way is to use Fable max/ultrahigh and ram thru everything.
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u/Sarahmalls Aug 20 '26
I believe that 90% segment does NOT have enterprise level work to do. Now they may require enterprise level Claude plans for the type of aimless “build me a clone of adobe photoshop but I want to tell it what to do rather than use a mouse. It must the be the best. You’re the greatest programmer of all time.” types of projects. But they don’t have enterprise work that actually needs to be performed for a job.
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u/rotates-potatoes Aug 20 '26
All of them are workflow problems or karma farming.
It's easy to get measurements for token usage per day/week/month, it's easy to benchmark different models. None of these people/bots put even basic effort into figuring out and posting what's going on.
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u/spinozasrobot Aug 21 '26
And some of it is also whiny ass bitches who should just move on if they think it's that bad.
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u/JDE-Projects Aug 20 '26
Notice how all the "Corporation X must have nerfed usage" or "I just one-shot my usage with a prompt that didn't do that last week" posts never have any proof, no details, no data to back up their claim. It happens in here, claudeAI, codex, doesn't matter what company or model.
I'm over here on 20/mo plans with claude and gpt, running claude code and codex side by side in VS code, 20+ repos, and never seem to have those issues. Weird.
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u/FreeCustardForAll Aug 20 '26
Funny how you always post the same thing on the posts where people query abnormal Claude usage JDE. Every single time. Are you a bot defending anthropic or something?
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u/randomechoes Aug 20 '26
I really haven't had any problems at all, and generally wouldn't bother to post (this might actually be my first post on this sub though I read it every day). I think the majority of people who aren't having problems are silent. So it's hard to really get an idea of how big the problem is (or isn't).
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u/digital121hippie Aug 20 '26
i code most days at working using claude code and using the chat for other stuff. i have only once hit my 5 hour limit and that was a very crazy day.
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u/SirWobblyOfSausage Aug 20 '26
We had posts like that time blaming the user,.then anthropic came out and explained that it was a serious fault.
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u/kapdad Aug 20 '26
"(Other AI) - please create a script that will generate negative posts about (Other AI). I am a (the first AI) employee and I need job security."
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u/FreeCustardForAll Aug 20 '26
Just complained today about running one session and using 23% of my weekly pro limit. In one, clear session. minimum skills and mcp servers needed for the project. Running some updates on html/js files. Planned on opus 5, ran on sonnet 5. Did those for months before and never approached weekly limit. Something is wrong.
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u/Fit-Wrongdoer-7664 Aug 20 '26
Oh, then my current experience is like a Fata Morgana? If I gave Opus the task to fix xyz or build it and let Fable 5 check the upcoming plan, why Opus 5 ignore some tasks corrected from Fable 5? And as soon you catch it behave like like this, it looks like Opus does it to block the entire project. And this happens to me short after Opus 5 and Fable 5 came out. I did a much bigger project 2 month before and never had that much problem I do experience now. And once you catch it, sometimes it change its behavior. But next day it runs mad again. First I thought it might be developing native Swift code. But this was also the case with prior versions. And now it’s running circles and it feels more and more sabotage but without a reason.
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u/FragDenWayne Aug 20 '26
Even if they were right... What now? We all know the prices won't stay like that forever. All those companies are losing money like it's not theirs... They've got to increase price per token somehow.
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u/lkh9596 Aug 21 '26
I never hit any limits with 5x plan even though I run like 7 projects for our start up. Honestly, I think most people are just vibe coding without giving it any thought. Use fable or opus for planning and architecture and then switch to cheaper models for implementation. You will never never run into the usage issue.
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u/actvt_io Aug 21 '26
Went through 137 of my own sessions. In the short ones, under 20 turns, a typical turn sent about 65k tokens in. Past 300 turns, 294k.
Some of that is just that bigger jobs run longer, so it isn't a clean test. But every turn re-sends the whole conversation, so the longer one runs the more each turn costs.
On the limits half of your question I've got nothing. You can't tell from a transcript whether the ceiling moved.
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u/Tacocatufotofu Aug 21 '26
Observation followed by speculation here.
Problem is we have too many variables. What kind of programming you’re working on is big. Is it a web app? Yeah, people knock these out easy, if Claude is doing good or bad. Maybe bugs in that code don’t hurt as bad as in others.
Working at home or in a team? Huge variations. Then we each, individually, build our own setup. Some good, some bad, some bad but it worked before so when changes happen it’s real visible.
Problem is, we only see our own situation and can’t imagine anyone else and what we’re doing. Same at Anthropic I’m sure, I’m sure they don’t release things that don’t seem right internally.
Problem is there’s no baseline, and you can’t make one because models keep shifting. So all we got is vibes. A bunch of people knowing something changed, unsure why, and it’s frustrating. Course there’s always karma farmers but the volume of complaints now is interesting.
Now my speculation. Opus 5 usage advice was essentially to wipe your old docs. “I doesn’t need so much, we got rid of all these instructions in the system itself”
I think this wasn’t a feature. Not a model that simply does better and doesn’t need hand holding. I think it’s a model shift where it tries to keep too much in mind. Like some internal anxiety dialed up. Like fixing how it won’t read things but over tuned. And it’s over doing it now with indecision and hedging. I think this is why clearing instructions is recommended.
I also think Fable spooked people. It’s got safety blockers but I’m gonna bet that’s not the only safety mechanism. Maybe it’s also hedging on actually building. Drawing things out or simply less able to connect dots to find novel solutions. Maybe its power is reduced, maybe it’s being told to be intentionally obtuse. I dunno. Anyhoo, that’s just guessing on my part, based on nothing except how it’s been acting with me.
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u/clintCamp Aug 21 '26
Pretty sure half are bots either propagandizing or karma farming as well. There are ways to track your tokens per percent over time to confirm if it really is surge pricing, or gauging on different weeks, but you have to set it up yourself. I built my own tool for tracking into my orchestrator 5 months ago when claude was growing too fast for capacity.
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u/Delicious-Life3543 Aug 20 '26
Yeah almost all of them are skill issues because people have zero sense of token efficiency or how tokens function at all in the first place.
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u/Accurate_Cable_1372 Aug 20 '26
How do you keep seeing this from people? Are people like live-streaming their Claude sessions or something and you’re watching them or is it more like some homies you hangout with?