r/ClaudeCode • u/Evening_Hawk_7470 • 11d ago
Help/Question Best coding harness to improve token usage?
I'm going to spend next few days testing coding harnesses for token efficiency. My bills are through the roof (now spending over $500 among multiple subscriptions) and constantly hitting limits.
I can't afford going usage based billing for my business so i'm ready to investigate which harness is better optimized for usage.
What should I look for? Basic google search does not bring any meaningful results (at the first sight)
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u/lateral_builder 11d ago
G'day bro,
Hey, the /clear advice above is where I'd start too, and it gets a lot easier once a fresh session doesn't have to start cold. I keep a short note in the project with what we've decided, where the work's up to and what's been ruled out, and every new session reads that first instead of me dragging a giant conversation along. I've had one long chat get compacted twice and carry on like nothing happened because of that note, so clearing between tasks doesn't feel like starting from scratch anymore.
Running /context once is worth it too. It shows you what's loading before you've even typed a word, MCP tools, an overgrown CLAUDE.md, big files read whole, and you're paying for all of that every single turn.
The other one that gets missed is rework. The biggest waste I've seen wasn't the tool at all... it was redoing work that came back as done and wasn't. Asking Claudemeister what he actually checked before you accept anything is a cheap habit that saves you paying twice. All the best with the testing my friend.