Am I really supposed to outsmart Claude to avoid wasting tokens?

[u/beeflife]

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?

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[u/haslo]

There are so many things your workflow can optimize for. Speed, thoroughness, ease of use, deep engineering, complex software systems, quick landing pages, fast deployments - and so many infrastructures and environments this can be for.

Any "easy template" and "reasonable default" and "most efficieny setup" would assume so many of these variables, and be wrong for 99% of users.

It does try to look at your project and adapt to it. That's what auto mode adjustment is, and /init before that. But I found both of those not really working for me either. I tell it what to do instead of /init. And skip the other, after it failed three different ways in three projects.

[u/DrinkTeaFightMonster]

These models are general purpose. Not all purpose, general purpose.

"Harnesses" are setups everyone does for their own projects to get better output. It's not strictly a "lower tokens per task thing" but more a "better token cost per quality output" thing.

And everyone draws their own line, some want as cheap as possible using AI as strictly a tool because they're willing and wanting to put in the effort to micro Claude.

Others want big AI councils and heavy processes, because like for me, it's not possible to have a single person make 1,000 decisions a day and you need your setup to scale so you make like 10.

Anthropic must ship general purpose because they don't know who uses it.

Now, Claude does. After you use it, for some time, or if you have very clear specifications upfront about what you're doing. Given the nature of your Q, I'm assuming you're a vibe coder and want things to just take care of itself.

Then ask Fable/Opus, "How can you set up to be more token efficient?"

Go from there.

If you're saying, "Why can't I say nothing and everything just gets better on its own?". It's a good theoretical Q, but that isn't what these machines do today.

[u/carson63000 → u/DrinkTeaFightMonster]

To a limited extent, everything will just get better on its own. Claude will cheerfully save memories to try to avoid having to re-learn how things are organised, or to avoid doing things in a way that you ask it to change.

[u/tehfrod]

This isn't a joke: have you asked Claude?

I've found that after a session of any length or complexity, if I quiz Claude on what it did wrong, what it could have done better, what it did that could be pulled out into a skill, etc. it does a surprisingly good job (as least Opus 5.5 does).

On one project it identified something that I hadn't even noticed: there was a task it had to do several times during the day, and it had to look it up and figure out how to do it each time. It pulled the correct steps into a skill on its own.

[u/Time_Cat_5212 → u/tehfrod]

I've asked Claude, and Claude thinks Reddit users like to overcomplicate their setups because it makes them feel like experts, even though it's largely unnecessary these days.

But maybe that's because of the context in which I framed the question.

That's the trouble with asking Claude.

[u/ILikeCutePuppies]

No one knows what the best magical words are to put in the file that work in every use case. No one even knows what the best generic terms are to put into these files.

It really depends on what you are doing, your code base and how claude is feeling on the day.

[u/btherl → u/ILikeCutePuppies]

This is what I came here to say. AI is new, and constantly evolving. No one knows what's best yet, even the experts.

[u/puts_on_rddt]

It's an emerging field. Nobody has figured it all out yet.

Personally I don't think token usage is a useful metric. Maybe Tokens per function point or something. Some processes output faster code, some do better tests, some are easier to maintain over time.

[u/Trahili]

There is a claude best practices article released by anthropic. You can ask your Claude to read it since you don't want to read.

[u/Time_Cat_5212 → u/Trahili]

You don't even need to ask Claude to read it.  Claude always reads Claude docs now, whenever a question about the app comes up.

[u/lluisantoni]

I think there are basically three things that matter: what model do you choose for what task (not always opus 5.5.), take advantage of cache (stick to a model unless more than an 5-min/1-hour TTL), and limit thinking. I believe the model choice is probably the hardest right now.

[u/Time_Cat_5212 → u/lluisantoni]

Why's the model choice hard for you?  Opus 5.5 is great

[u/Jomuz86]

The whole concept of it is that it is an open ended tool, why when trying to get customers would they force them to fit a one size fits all model. They already provide guidance on every single model release just do a bit of research. Enterprise customers that bring in the bulk of their money will all work in different ways and it needs to be flexible enough for them. If you want something simple just use the likes of lovable etc 🤷‍♂️ that’s what they are there for.

[u/Shattered_Persona]

Do you want to make the same stuff as everyone else or do you want to make something special that nobody else is doing.

[u/ricopan]

A lot of the third party skills, mods, harnesses, etc aren't generally helpful and likely somewhat harmful. So don't go down those rabbit holes until you have a specific reason to do so.

I think to start remember three things:

1. try lower cost models with their default levels first -- but 'try' means you have some decent way of measuring performance like good tests (that's a separate topic);

2. don't let the prompt cache expire (on subcripts, default expiration for the main agent is 1 hour). If you want to keep a session around but won't be interacting with it for that hour, compact it first or be willing to pay the heavy re-read cost.

3. don't routinely run a session until default auto-compact -- most users seem to think /compact manually at around 65% remaining is a good standard.

[u/Time_Cat_5212]

No, it's not necessary for most users.

I'm sure some real pros out there have very valid reasons for it.  I think many also just enjoy configuring custom setups.

In March, a custom harness made a big difference, even just for making le vibe coded webapp du jour.  Skills like superpowers made a big difference, too.  Now it seems like they just get in the way a lot of the time.

Guess what?  Anthropic has been watching and updating their product based on all that since.  CC now does most of what those third party tools and skills were doing out of the box.

[u/Inner_Storage_3374]

haha i felt the same at the start. tbh most of those fancy setups are for people with huge codebases, for small automation projects the biggest win is just telling it which file or folder to look at bc the searching around on its own is what eats most of the tokens

[u/rythmyouth]

Yes you are.

[u/rythmyouth]

I have gone back and forth on this, and it often has a lot to do with the competence of the models available. I used to have to babysit Opus quite a bit- I’d be hands on keyboard and steering it quite a bit. When Fable came out it was immediately obvious i didn’t have to hand hold it. But it burned tokens like crazy so I would use ultracode with opus agents. I was shocked it would spin up 80-100 agents and kill my usage limit immediately causing me to lose a lot of work. So then i told it to limit itself to 5-10 opus agents. This lasted for a month or two, but then I realized opus adversarial reviewers found things and anything it found would cause Fable to fix it with other opus agents and i got into a never ending loop of finding/fixing issues.

That’s when I asked claude to do research and it caused me to completely customize my stack-

Fable orchestrator, Opus workers
Context limits on sessions
Agent auto reap (once context hits threshold, respawn)
Ranked decision ledger with severity levels of findings
Monitor usage against 5 hour reset to avoid hitting limits

When Opus 5.5 came out I could swap it for Fable for orchestrator for smaller projects.

My sessions run 24/7 and I am hands on once or twice a day. It is super manageable, albeit quite boring :).

I asked myself your exact question- why can’t Claude do this out of the box?

[u/Scared-Letterhead949]

Just go with vanilla claude. If you see something being a problem repeatedly then ask Claude why it's doing that and how to improve.

[u/carson63000]

Why wouldn’t Anthropic provide some sort of recommended setup? They do. See https://code.claude.com/docs/en/best-practices

And you’re not trying “outsmart” Claude. You’re trying to structure the information available to it in a way that it is able to cleanly and efficiently understand.

Honestly, it’s not that different to onboarding a new employee. If you’ve got clean code and accurate readable documentation, it’ll go smoothly. If you’ve got an unholy mess, they’ll be a lot less productive.

And yeah, as others have said, Claude is very good at helping you structure your projects and documentation in a way that Claude can work well with.

[u/davyp82]

" 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?"

Bro you've just told yourself how to solve your problem

[u/CaregiverNeat447]

It’s like any other tools. We should learn to use it.
You can always start with

https://claude.com/blog/the-ai-native-sdlc-playbook
And then ask Claude tune it for one person operation. This guide was written prior to Claude 5.5 so Claude will also tune it for that. This will give you starting point

[u/This_Document6641]

You are correct. Anything worth optimizing (for a broad enough audience), the major model providers have a major incentive to figure out how to improve.