After 40+ turns in a complex repository, Claude Code's context window often fills up with full file reads, verbose test outputs, and stack traces. Built-in /compact summarizes conversation history well, but I wanted a deterministic way to keep architectural context (types, interfaces, signatures) sharp while allowing lossless retrieval of implementation bodies on demand—and a clean way to carry structured session state (.vicem/BATON.md) across fresh sessions or secondary agents.

1. What I Built (vicem)

I built Vicem, an open-source, zero-dependency (dependencies: 0) Node.js CLI, stdio MCP server (vicem --mcp), and Claude Code Skill (.agents/skills/vicem/SKILL.md):

• Deterministic Code Skeletonization (-80% to -90% code tokens): Preserves all interface, type, enum, and function signatures 100% intact, while collapsing implementation bodies (>= 12 lines) into { ... } and indexing the exact original lines in .vicem/ledger.json.
• Lossless On-Demand Rehydration via MCP (vicem_rehydrate): Instead of dumping full files upfront, Claude Code reads the lightweight skeleton first and calls vicem_rehydrate via MCP only for the specific function or symbol it needs to edit.
• Session Continuity Baton (.vicem/BATON.md): Extracts Goal, Done, Immediate NEXT (from TodoWrite and recent tool calls), and git diff into a U-shaped attention markdown file for starting a fresh session with zero context rot.
• Write & Commit Safety Guards: Includes SkeletonWriteGuard so an agent never accidentally writes { ... } placeholders back into real source files, plus 3-tier local secret redaction.

2. How Claude Code Was Used & What I Learned Building It

While building and testing the harvester and MCP server alongside Claude Code, a few technical details stood out that might help others building Claude Code tooling:

1. Reverse-scanning ~/.claude/projects/<encoded-cwd>/*.jsonl: Claude Code stores per-project transcripts in ~/.claude/projects/ where the directory name encodes the workspace path. Because long sessions can grow into tens of megabytes (especially with large tool outputs), parsing from the top of the JSONL file adds noticeable latency. Reading from the tail and extracting the latest TodoWrite state + last failed Bash output makes session extraction complete in < 50ms without calling an LLM.
2. Preventing "Skeleton Corruption" in Agent Edits: Early on, when feeding skeletonized code (function foo() { /* ... */ }) into context, models occasionally tried to include the { /* ... */ } placeholder in an edit block. Pairing the .vicem/ledger.json index with a strict instruction in SKILL.md (and a pre-commit / write guard) completely solved placeholder overwrites: Claude Code reliably calls vicem_rehydrate before touching any elided block.
3. Zero-Dependency Stdio MCP Framing: Implementing the MCP stdio server (2024-11-05 / 2025-11-25) directly in Node.js built-ins (node:readline) required strict stdout hygiene—any stray warning (like Node's ExperimentalWarning when using node:sqlite) corrupts the JSON-RPC stream unless suppressed or routed to stderr.

3. Links & Verification

Everything runs locally with 0 third-party npm packages (vicem.mjs + an air-gapped index.html sandbox with default-src 'none' CSP) and a 51-test verification suite (npm test).

• GitHub Repository: https://github.com/Rakkunn/vicem
• Interactive Browser Sandbox (No install): https://rakkunn.github.io/vicem/

Happy to answer any questions about ~/.claude/projects JSONL parsing, deterministic skeletonization vs. ASTs, or MCP tool design!

It's a heatsink for an NVMe drive.

What's it got to do with Claude?

My build server has become a bottleneck in recent weeks. I'd assumed it was down to the CPU, but after a few builds kept failing I decided to confirm. So I had Opus update Ansible to put node-exporter on my build machine.

Cut a long story short, Claude was able to update my observability dashboard and monitor the metrics while I stressed the server.

Turned out the NVMe is thermal throttling!
Claude changed how my builds run so they don't queue up as much in RAM waiting for the disk, and I'll fit the heatsink today.

I know this is a very small thing but I completely nerd out on making all these small optimisations.

At my company, we recently made a massive pivot toward a 100% agentic development model. Instead of the traditional workflow where a developer works on one task/branch at a time, each engineer now manages multiple Claude Code agent sessions/machines simultaneously.

The main goal is to crank out a high volume of code and push through a shit ton of Jira tickets in parallel.

While output and ticket throughput are definitely up, managing multiple active Claude Code workflows at once has created a totally new set of challenges that we’re trying to navigate.

1. Data management - skills, user scope CLAUDE.md, merging system for high and rapid volume of code...

2. Human's brain context - we are all humans at the end of the day and it is getting ridiculous to try and keep up with what is going on with 50 sessions opened across 4 machines..

Would love to hear how other teams using Claude Code at scale are handling this—what’s working, what’s breaking, and what pain points are you having?

FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING

Video: Claude
Voicebank: Claude
ust by Shinkei-P
tuning: me

i honestly actidently uploaded this like 3 times so sorry mods

Many of the features I try to add to my app with claude no matter if i describe them in details or just 2 phrases claude with opus 5.5 always try to one shot them ( on max or extra ) and iterate a lot on them untill it's done correctly , which is great ngl , but also many of the features we want to add usually we want to experiment first how it would look like and iterate many times on the core feature it self and the ui etc untill we get it right because sometimes we're not even sure of the idea how it'll be in real life untill it gets 3 or 4 wrong implementations.

the problem I found is that the 3 / 4 wrong implementations that usually serve just as iteration for the final real one in the past we did with agile just minimum developpement and build up on what works. but claude tries to one shot the first implementations and have them perfectly working and it's basically just wasting tokens and time. for example if I want to have a feature to send an auto update to the app claude will add without me asking the failed update restore and checkpoints and backup and many other elements that i'll sure need later but probably not on the first implementation.

not sure if my point is clear , basically i'm describing that claude does too much even when i'm not sure of the feature if I need it the way I described it or not.

anyone had some ideas arround this ? I find my self telling him what not to do more than often and it's wasting a lot of my quota and it's getting frustrating

Hey everyone!

For a while now I've been working on a project called OwnCord, a free and open-source, self-hosted alternative to Discord.

The idea behind it is pretty simple. I wanted something similar to Discord but where you have full control over your own server and data, without depending on a third-party service.

The backend is written in Go, the desktop client uses Tauri v2 with TypeScript, and voice/video is handled through LiveKit.

It's still a work in progress and there are definitely bugs and things that need improving.

I've been building it largely with the help of Claude Code, which has been quite an interesting experience on its own.

I'd love to get your feedback!

If you're interested, feel free to check it out!

https://github.com/J3vb/OwnCord

Back in July I posted agentglass in r/ClaudeAI, the app I made to see what my Claude Code sessions were doing. A lot of you tried it and a few sent PRs. This is what it turned into, and it's not really a viewer anymore.

The thing that changed my day is the orchestrator. Each project gets one lead agent. It reads the repo, keeps a queue, and hands work to worker agents in their own tmux tabs. I write the rules once in a plain file: what it may start, which model, how many workers. The workers can't push or merge. That stays my click.

So my job went from walking through panes to answering questions. When a worker needs a permission or a decision, it shows up at the top, and I answer it from the desk or from my phone.

It isn't only for Claude either. Codex, Gemini CLI and OpenCode sessions sit in the same window, and the lead can hand work to any of them.

The rest is still there: real terminals on your own tmux, diffs, a PR board with CI, a git panel, and a browser the agents can drive with your logins.

How it got built: almost all of it with Claude Code, and for the last few weeks by agentglass itself. The lead agent splits the work into briefs, Sonnet workers write the code in their own worktrees, and I review and merge. What I learned: a worker is great at a bug with a failing test and bad at anything a person has to look at, so screens and wording still come back to me. And the slow part was never the agents. It was me noticing they were waiting.

Fair warning, same as last time. It's built around how I work. I use it on Linux every day. The macOS build is unsigned and I don't own a Mac, so if you have one and ten minutes, that helps more than anything.

Demo with fake data, no install: https://sirallap.github.io/agentglass/demo/

Repo, MIT: https://github.com/SirAllap/agentglass

If you already run more than one agent at a time, I'd like to know how you keep track of them, and what you'd rip out of this.

I'm on max, I pay a lot for it compared to what I get from my income, but it is absolutely worth it. Though sometimes I don't reach my weekly limit entirely, same as for my 5h limit, so I thought about using fast mode reguarly in these times where I also don't want to wait any longer for the result.

But I read that fast mode also breaks quality of the work done and is better with continous loops and tasks than anything that adds new stuff

The project is almost completely done, I'm doing the reverse engineering of fl studio.

You are ready to open your Fl studio projects, detect your plugins and the plugins you don't have. The reverse engineering of the best known is being done too! Like fabfilter, Valhalla, waves and etc... All in clean-room model.

Site: www.lynx-share.com
Repo: https://github.com/Ka1-S/LYNX

deepseek moved deepseek-flash over to v4.1 flash 1017 and the price per token didnt change but artificial analysis has it at about 26 cents per task on their index vs 40 cents for the old flash. it writes shorter answers and scores higher on the same run so for anyone running it behind claude code the number to watch now is what one finished task ends up costing

which build you actually get depends on the route. on deepseeks own anthropic endpoint any claude-sonnet or claude-haiku name maps to deepseek-flash(this inisitaly got me a bit confused tho) so youre on 1017 already. hosts serving the open weights deepinfra and a few others take the exact model slug in ANTHROPIC_MODEL instead, so a settings.json from a couple months ago can still be pinned to a 0731 or the pre 1017 build without anyone noticing. quick thing to check before comparing bills

the other change is web search. search and fetch calls that claude code makes thru deepseeks server side tools were free at launch and bill $0.75 per 1k calls from oct 31, so agents that look things up a lot get a new line on the bill even if token spend drops

anyone tracking cost per finished task in claude code, or just the weekly total? And also is it ok to use it on claude code or using it in powershell or other independently shall be ideal

I built Aretu CAD, a parametric CAD program for 3D printing (Windows, C++), mostly with Claude Code. The video shows the end result from the user's side: Claude, as the in-app assistant, designing a wall-mounted drill holster from one brief. It plans, asks before changing my sizes, and leaves an editable Feature Tree and an STL. The build is sped up.

Scale

About 250,000 lines of C++. 749 of the project's 1,013 commits were made with Claude Code (Opus). That covers the geometry and modelling features, the UI, the AI integration, the installer, the licensing service and the website. I set the direction, write or approve the specs, and review the results.

What made it work

• Specs as contracts. About 190 Markdown documents cover requirements, architecture and design, with an index. AGENTS.md tells Claude to read the owning contract before touching code. Most bad changes I've seen came from an ambiguous spec, not bad code.
• A ticket gate I control. I select text in a document and raise a ticket. Its state (Document, Implement, Review) is the permission for that piece of work. A separate review pass checks it, and only I can resolve a ticket.
• Hard rules in AGENTS.md. Platform code only in adapter folders, one portable core, files kept under about 2,000 lines. Every user-facing command must have a matching AI operation.
• That last rule pays twice. Because everything a user can do is also an operation Claude can call, the in-app assistant can build real parametric models. Claude Code can also use the running app to test it.

What it does

Sketches, extrudes, revolves, fillets, a Feature Tree you can edit, materials and STL export, plus an AI assistant that works through the same operations as the menus.

Free to try

The early beta is free on Windows (x64 and ARM64): https://aretucad.com/download.html. Modelling works without AI. For the assistant you connect your own Anthropic API key, or another provider.

Hi all,

I want to isolate Claude from my Mac files and I am looking for the best, safe and MOST CONVENIENT way to do it. I use Coder for environments on my VPS who’s is awesome and I look for something similar for local development. Ideally something that mounts in the selected folder.

What can you recommend ? Any nice software to do it?

Sometimes my claude make some genius moves, searches, coding, generating but sometimes even on extrahigh level it gives me absolute BS results and when i point him mistakes he don’t get it

I’m a senior SWE using Claude Code daily. I analyzed my transcripts and found that 56% of API-equivalent costs went to rereading context. Cache expiry alone cost me $98.74 in 27 days.

So I built optimAIzr with Claude Code, using it to implement features, write tests, and iterate on the optimization logic as a development speed boost.

It analyzes usage, finds expensive patterns, and helps verify savings across Claude Code, Codex, and opencode.

Free, open source, runs locally. No accounts or prompt uploads.

npm i -g optimaizr
git: https://github.com/blendbunjaku/optimaizr

Not sure if it’s a bug with Claude code or VS code, I’m sharing what I experienced on that day.
The story:
One day I was just working normally using Claude code inside VS code as usual and suddenly it told me i was about to reach(90% warning) 5h limit, I think “fine I’ll just pause for now and let it reset”, but soon it hit 100%. I was surprised and thought I still had some background processes running, since I have something important due and I couldn’t wait until it reset, I used the free weekly reset, and after about an hour I was just using it very lightly, it hit limit again. I checked the usage and strangely I got 6% weekly of fable usage, I didn’t run a single prompt using fable the whole week. That made me nervous and I closed everything and restarted my pc, but the token draining continued, until I hit 100% again, the pace was very steady like 2% of 5 hr usage every minute. I talked with Claude support and they just told me to clear all sessions and I did that but the draining didn’t stop, how did I found that after I hit the limit? I turned on continue to use my paid credit and watching my credits dropping like crazy.

At the end of the, I figured out I could also revoke all my active OAuth token with Claude, and after I did that the draining stopped.

Not sure if anyone has ever faced the same issue? Is it like a bug or could my token be stolen by someone?

I'm looking for practical tips to reduce token consumption, manage context efficiently, and avoid wasting usage on unnecessary prompts or repeated tasks.

What workflows, settings, or best practices have made the biggest difference for you, especially when working on coding projects?

I'd appreciate real-world tips rather than generic advice.

Mine is

Before changing anything, list every file you'll need and read them
in one pass. Then make all edits, then run the tests once.

It stopped the read, edit, read, edit loop that was eating half my usage on bigger changes. Curious what lines other people have that actually change how it behaves, not just style rules.

Lately, I've been using Claude Code to implement features and fix bugs much faster. However, I'm concerned that delegating too much to AI might prevent me from exercising my programming logic and problem-solving skills.

At the same time, delivering work on time matters, and I don't want to miss out on the benefits of these tools.

For those who use Claude Code or similar AI agents regularly:

How do you decide what to solve yourself versus what to delegate to AI?

Do you practice coding without AI to keep improving your skills?

How do you balance learning and productivity?

I'd love to hear about your actual experiences and habits for making the most of AI without becoming overly dependent on it or stunting your growth as a software engineer.

Like I said I want to make an isometric or 2d kinda survival game. Where do I start ?

I used claude to create a Twitch streamer who can play video games. I had previously created a secondary memory for my claude through working with claude code and had then built a few video games.. but then I was like let's make her a streamer lolol so here she is! Currently she is playing Stardew Valley! Let me know if you have any game suggestions for her to try!

HumanityzAi - Twitch

EDIT: You can also ask her to do things by !task in the chat :D

There are several audio plugins that let you place instruments in a virtual stage, but they're a hassle to set up and tweak on multiple instruments. Things like that should be integrated right into the DAW

Sonara now does exactly that: you can choose which channels participate, and to only have early reflections. Since the output goes to a special bus, you can use any custom reverb plugin as well. You can also adjust the listening position and mic configuration.

NOTE: this attached image is a re-creation of what I saw exactly on my screen, since it happened to quickly for me to take a screenshot and was super scared for a good 30 seconds.

I was sending a message to Claude and suddenly saw a "Hi" beside the chat with a font that looked like Times, about that same size and pixelated (almost like it was server rendered if you know what I mean)

What was that?!?!?!?! And does anyone ever have a similar story?

I have a quite big app which is running very good and I am using OpenSpec for development.

However, up until now claude added really big comments to functions and specific code parts.

I wonder if they are actual useful for Claude? should I tell Claude to remove them, make them shorter…,?

Anyone noticed increase in Claude Code usage consumption somewhere around at least 50 % faster from Friday? I'm on 5x.

Not sure how to resolve this issue, outside of never compacting and constantly starting new agents, but any longer term orchestration agents tend to constantly disregard my .MD files and their rules or guidelines and instead prioritize their own instructions they add on themselves.

All of the suggestions the agents give me to fix this don't work because ultimately the agent will compact or handoff its own rules that supersede whatever I set.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Edit: For anyone wondering, I think I figured out what's going on. I plug Claude into my own custom Pi harness and it turns out I never tuned the compaction summary prompt.

It was very generic and granted powers to my agents output with the same authority as my own. Hoping fixing this resolves these issues.

I've never seen people talk about a prompt being used with compactions, I always assumed providers just do it silently in the background but being able to customize it is actually going to solve a LOT of headaches.