Live data from Hacker News

Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions

claude.com

121–130 of 206 posts

Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions

#121
post #29

> @-mention files instead of naming them. The file gets attached to your message directly, which saves a Read call, or a search if Claude has to go find it. I've heard it argued that this is an antipattern. If the file is large, it will read the whole file. With Read or something similar, it can do a targeted search and read only the relevant portion. Is this still not the case? Also, since they mention /context: Can…

You can make your own status line with something like "120K/200K Fable 5", it's nice.

except in vsc, there it cannot do it

Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions

#122
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make your own status line with something like "120K/200K Fable 5", it's nice.

You can do tons more, really. There’s even a built-in /statusline command to modify it; mine shows both context window usage alongside session and weekly limit, all of them as progress bars. Just ask Claude to do it.

That's what is shown by default in the app.

I'll never understand why anyone would want to restrict themselves to a terminal interface instead, and I say this as a Vim user.

Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions

#125

I don't understand why changing effort levels busts the cache. Couldn't effort levels be a decoding-only thing where they just change the probability of the token? Are they literally adding a hidden system prompt that says "effort level: $level" ?

Obviously it‘s something being put in the context that can not be taken out of it anymore.

Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions

#126
post #113

Recently I came across the /handoff skill, which I've been using a lot. I find it much better than /compact. Basically: - /handoff file creates a short document with the important context from your current session and maybe next steps as checklist. - You can then start a fresh session with /continue file - You can also hand the work from Claude to ChatGPT, or the other way around. Very useful at time of session limit…

> Plus your handoff files becomes a useful piece of project memory that you can reference later. I've been doing this since I started agentic development, and have a whole framework based on this; Simply put I define workflow s that output templated files for everytype of tasks that happens in development. It's a powerful pattern I'd recommend everyone.

I started doing this and then a colleague of mine recommended me OpenSpec. It might be overkill for small projects but it’s pretty clean and if you have goldfish memory like me, it helps to track changes.

Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions

#128

I don't understand why changing effort levels busts the cache. Couldn't effort levels be a decoding-only thing where they just change the probability of the token? Are they literally adding a hidden system prompt that says "effort level: $level" ?

> Are they literally adding a hidden system prompt that says "effort level: $level" ?

Yes. https://magazine.sebastianraschka.com/p/controlling-reasonin...

Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions

#129
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if you also laugh at articles about how to reduce your AWS bill, or how to add indices to Postgres such that you can run it on cheaper hardware.

You can generally understand your AWS cloud usage, and waste can be self evident with their existing tools. Not at all with llms. A postgres index post is unlikely to reach front page. It's already part if the docs, and should include more context to be read worthy. They are not equal comparison. This before the fact that there is no guarantee that a model follows your agent instructions (plenty of easy to reach for…

I thought that software engineers were supposed to do, you know, engineering - solving hard problems, dealing with uncertainty.

But you might be right, engineering around the difficult LLM primitive might be a task which is just too hard for your typical software engineer, as you said, they want predictability, hand holding, determinism, most are unable to deal with the real world which is not a spherical cow in a vacuum. So I guess they can stick to simple very well understood primitives like EC2 or Postgres and leave dealing with LLMs for others.

Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions

#130
post #93

What I want is a version of `/clear` that keeps the conversation but drops out things like bloated logs, error traces, etc that were only relevant in the immediate local context. I guess compacting somewhat does that but I want something more explicitly that trims out these extremely bloated artefacts while maintaining in full the actual conversation history.

Wouldn't that context with gaps where the output should be confuse the agent too much? At the very least they should be replaced with an explanation that sections were redacted. Otherwise I am imagining the agent will think the commando failed or it won't know how it fixed something.
Post reply on HN