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Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

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Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#141

Post by notnullorvoid »

hvb2 wrote: post #47
korrectional wrote: post #26

My opinion is that claude code uses more tokens simply because Anthropic makes more money that way and forces people into their subscriptions. This is supported by the fact that they won't let you use your sub on a different coding agent. I use pi btw.

> This is supported by the fact that they won't let you use your sub on a different coding agent I mean, that's a very weak argument? Isn't a much more plausible explanation that with your tooling you'll have more of a lock-in than with just your model?

Neither is mutually exclusive.

They get lock-in, and through that lock-in are more effectively able to inflate token usage.

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#142

Post by lkbm »

claw-el wrote: post #88
korrectional wrote: post #26

My opinion is that claude code uses more tokens simply because Anthropic makes more money that way and forces people into their subscriptions. This is supported by the fact that they won't let you use your sub on a different coding agent. I use pi btw.

Once I realized that Anthropic is a token merchant, I start to understand Anthropic’s decision more. They are always finding reasons for you to use more tokens through them unless the users revolt or demand some guardrails.

Seems unlikely they'd be this dumb. The way to get us to use more tokens is to make those tokens more useful, not less. Anthropic is full of people (including higher-ups) who know this.

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#143

Post by throwaway7783 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #107
mcv wrote: post #53

What really burns tokens is sub agents. I once gave Claude Code a pretty big task, and it immediately launched 7 sub agents which burned through my budget before even one of them was finished. Tried again 5 hours later: same result. If I let the main agent do the same task sequentially, it was no problem at all. I don't know if it's really just communication and orchestration that makes sub agents so inefficient, or…

This is why I happily use Codex. I run it basically 24/7 on a ~500k line repo, and only rarely run out of quota before the end of the week. My experience with Claude Code was very good until about 2.5 months ago, and then it suddenly turned unbelievably terrible for me. I have not and will hopefully never look back. I still have PTSD from how ungodly terrible it was that last week of using it.

This has been my experience as well. Something happened 2-3 months ago with Claude Code. It got slower, starting spinning and getting stuck more and more. I gave codex another shot out of my Claude frustrations, and have never looked back again.

Just tried Claude Code yesterday, and nope, it's the same old bad.

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#144

Post by xhrpost »

mcv wrote: post #53

What really burns tokens is sub agents. I once gave Claude Code a pretty big task, and it immediately launched 7 sub agents which burned through my budget before even one of them was finished. Tried again 5 hours later: same result. If I let the main agent do the same task sequentially, it was no problem at all. I don't know if it's really just communication and orchestration that makes sub agents so inefficient, or…

For a while everyone was saying sub agents is how you save tokens, use lower quality models with limited context to do simple parts of the job after a smart planning agent has put it all in place. Is that no longer true or is this just the result of sub agent being used at the wrong time?

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#145

Post by ramoz »

A harness is a part of the intelligence stack. It's no longer about raw access to the model

Also, I have seriously used most harnesses - One feels like it's being built in a place that truly understands AI and where agentic engineering is headed. You might not like it, but peak performance exists in CC when it comes to orchestration of bulk parallel work / subagents. The open source agents are catching up or accell in different way (Im preferable to pi.dev), but I'm not sure they're architecting orchestration the right why.

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#147

Post by clutter55561 »

Claude Code is not just a harness. It is a different product. You pick the smallest subscription that allows you to do your work. My “multiplier” on a $100 subscription is 5+.

If you’re using API, on the other hand, there is absolutely no reason to use Claude Code, or Codex.

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#148

Post by cyanydeez »

claw-el wrote: post #88
korrectional wrote: post #26

My opinion is that claude code uses more tokens simply because Anthropic makes more money that way and forces people into their subscriptions. This is supported by the fact that they won't let you use your sub on a different coding agent. I use pi btw.

Once I realized that Anthropic is a token merchant, I start to understand Anthropic’s decision more. They are always finding reasons for you to use more tokens through them unless the users revolt or demand some guardrails.

now reealize that LLMs are trained to produce tokens and like the halting problem, cant be trained not to produce tokens and youll realiE the AI labs are the perfect essential capitalist and like cancer, will keep growing useless tokens until it kills its host.

no amount of alignment will stop aomeone drom just shutting up.

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#149

Post by nijave »

claw-el wrote: post #88
korrectional wrote: post #26

My opinion is that claude code uses more tokens simply because Anthropic makes more money that way and forces people into their subscriptions. This is supported by the fact that they won't let you use your sub on a different coding agent. I use pi btw.

Once I realized that Anthropic is a token merchant, I start to understand Anthropic’s decision more. They are always finding reasons for you to use more tokens through them unless the users revolt or demand some guardrails.

I've done a couple side by sides on web chat with the same prompt on Opus 4.6, 4.7, and 4.8 and the output gets longer/more verbose on version increment. The enerr variants are definitely much wordier.

On the other hand, the newer variants also tend to benchmark higher so it's not quite a clean argument of "hey the new version eats more tokens"

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#150

Post by duxup »

mcv wrote: post #53

What really burns tokens is sub agents. I once gave Claude Code a pretty big task, and it immediately launched 7 sub agents which burned through my budget before even one of them was finished. Tried again 5 hours later: same result. If I let the main agent do the same task sequentially, it was no problem at all. I don't know if it's really just communication and orchestration that makes sub agents so inefficient, or…

It’s funny too because I’ll ask fairly simple things and it’s fine, similarly simple question might spin up a bunch of sub agents and I don’t know why….

I feel like maybe it could have asked for clarification or something rather than go and try to calculate all the digits of pi all of a sudden.

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