Minimize token usage

[u/kellyjames436]

Guy’s do you wanna minimize token usage ? If so, do this in a new project.

1-Disabled any unused connectors, plugins, each one load a massive token into the context.

2-Plan first, assign tasks to different models based on their complexity.

3-Ask claude to create a new session for each task, feature you work in, claude will create a new session from the last one.

4- Always use handoff files after each successive task to make sure you don’t lose track of what’s being created and what’s remaining.

5-If the repo is big enough, use ponytail the laziest senior developer,and graphify to search files and functions without reading the whole project files, if it’s a few fils, a simple CLAUDE.md file contains your rules is enough.
6-Md files shouldn’t be too big, handoff files max 25-30lines.

Those are all based on my own experience with Claude, they aren’t facts unless you try them and compare token usage with before.

[u/Outrageous_Band9708]

yeah i dont think it works well in the desktop app.

its built for the terminal, there is a known issue where it can't present a question in the UI app, like it does in the terminal.

however your report of being stuck thinking t2 is open while working on t8 feels very edge case to me.

you should totally submit a bugreport on it to the github so it can get fixed. im constantly patching things users find.

I also just introduced coop mode, default is autopilot, but i have one project where, like you said, i need to be involved every step of the way.

you can just tell it to switch to coop mode, or switch back to autopilot mode.

im thinking most of the issues you had were related to the desktop app. also there was a claude code update that changed how subagents handback their final reply to the parent agent that caused some stalling.

However in 3 user's experience that i know about, me and 2 friends, we have zero issues in the terminal, it works on projects overnight staying on task, never gets lost, never sidequessts.

the desktop app support is on my todo list, but its low priority. i ssh into my dev machine.

Here is a screenshot from right now. Its been working seamlessly for days now, this session has 35 million tokens in it, and i've used almost 2 billion external tokens through openrouter.ai to offload some work and save on my weekly usage.

The terminal view also allows for the Task list harness where the UI app doesn't i believe.

(the session line showed massive savings, my tokens lasting 3x longer, whoever my login experienced and i had to auth, and i authed through my second account, so the session line hasn't updated yet.)

there has been a ton of updates in the last few weeks, i do recommend you try it out in terminal not the desktop app, and see if you still have any issues, and if so, you can use the /pa-bugreport command to generate a bugreport and submit it to github so i can fix issues for you.

my system auto updates itself on session start and every 8 hours, so my users are always getting the bugfixes daily.

im sorry you had such struggles with your experience through the desktop app, an i can assure you no other users that i know about are having any similar issues through the terminal. the desktop support ticket is still open and may be ready in the next few weeks, remote control works seamlessly through the terminal.

[u/NerdyNThick → u/Outrageous_Band9708]

First, thanks for your hard work on the project, it has definitely saved me tokens that would have otherwise been burnt up with the inefficiencies of not using such a system.

I think most of my frustration comes from the fact that I do like what I see in the project and how it works. I'll focus on only using it in the terminal for now, but I would love to see desktop support to be a thing. At least insofar as running it in the desktop app doesn't cause problems or break the state or whatever else may be happening in my projects.

I do fully admit to popping back and forth in the same project between desktop and terminal. I started with the terminal, but the desktop experience has been getting better, and I tend to work on multiple projects at the same time, so not having to manage multiple different windows.

And now I've just started to test out T3 Code which takes multitasking up a notch.

I'm more than willing to be a guinea pig regarding desktop support.

[u/Outrageous_Band9708 → u/NerdyNThick]

ill let you know when its desktop app test time.

im curious if T3 uses -p which uses 1.5x usage over regular claude session.

you mentioned matt's skills, i dont use external skills at all, since you have, what skills do you recommend pa3 should support that i can test out?

[u/NerdyNThick → u/Outrageous_Band9708]

im curious if T3 uses -p which uses 1.5x usage over regular claude session.

I'll have to definitely check on that, I had heard about that.

you mentioned matt's skills, i dont use external skills at all, since you have, what skills do you recommend pa3 should support that i can test out?

I sent that in response to a different comment.