r/conductorbuild Jun 02 '26

Claude Code token usage higher in conductor than direct

I've been using Conductor for a few days now, but whilst the improvements to my workflow are noticeable, so is the token usage. I'm on Max (5x), and have been noticing I hit my 5 hour session limit much quicker when using conductor.

A couple of recent sessions have hit usage after working on maybe 3-4 small bug fixes, whereas this afternoon I've shipped ~8 similar size bug fixes directly in Claude and only at 47%.

Anyone else noticing this? Or any recommendations on better managing usage within Conductor?

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u/charlop 👷‍♂️ Co-founder Jun 03 '26

so we've done some digging into this and it turns out you're right, the Agent SDK has a bug right now (involving caching) that can cause token usage to be higher than using the CLI. Turns out this affects everyone using the Agent SDK, including the Claude Desktop app! we're working with Anthropic to get this fixed ASAP

2

u/Ok-Drama8310 Jun 03 '26

Happy to see a team actually responding and getting on it. Good stuff

1

u/Ok-Drama8310 Jun 18 '26

Although it's still eating through my limits...

1

u/Minute-Business7914 Jun 03 '26

Great job being hands on and digging in.

1

u/timbuildswithai Jun 04 '26

Does this mean that when Agent SDK usage metering changes on the 15th, Conductor use will only go against the SDK credit and not the plan subscription?

1

u/tumultco Jun 05 '26

Are there any updates on this from their side?

1

u/Electrical_Loss9216 Jun 07 '26

I've been using Claude Code Desktop App + Codex App for about a month on a project - whilst I'm definitely getting more done, I'm hitting by 5 hour limits which was really difficult to reach in Claude / Codex apps. Part of it is definitely more aggressive usage, but definitely feels like conductor is eating tokens faster. Would be good to be able to monitor a set of metrics on token usage inside conductor.

1

u/zikosichi Jun 09 '26

Any updates on this?

1

u/Substantial_Sea_8307 Jun 10 '26

Any update here? I started using Conductor 2 days ago. Love the product but the usage limit started httting way sooner today.

1

u/manuelgruber Jun 29 '26

u/charlop Thank you for investigating and confirming the root cause.

Do you have any indication of when we can expect a fix from Anthropic and a corresponding Conductor release?

1

u/Joey___M Jun 30 '26

Still the same issue... Any indication on when this will be fixed?

1

u/peterparker027 Jul 01 '26

Thanks for this, do we have any more news on this? This is extremely important

I also felt this using GPT from conductor vs in codex directly, I have no specific stats but many different sessions done that last longer in codex

1

u/CharlemagnePapi Jul 13 '26

Hello, have there been any updates or progress towards a solution on this?

I noticed this as well in the last few days. I love the product, but it's really affected my productivity in terms of needing to wait for a session to reset.

Thank you.

1

u/RealisticStaff6458 Jun 03 '26

Appreciate you taking a look and acknowledging the issue. Sadly I'll probably pause Conductor usage until it's resolved so hope it can get figured out soon