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Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

engineering.atspotify.com

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Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#162

So this is just delegating certain work to dumber models? I certainly wouldn't use Gemini 2.5 Flash (!!?) for code writing as suggested. I've never had an issue with Codex or Claude reading massive files, they're really good at precise greps.

This is basically exaclty what Cursor started doing when Composer was first released.

The app would start using it for exploration tasks, and then as it improved it became the default for writing code and tests too. You can change it of course, but I find it does a pretty decent job if you have a large model directing it.

The parent model of course checks the work, but most of the time the handoff is good enough that no edits are needed.

It's also pretty fast and cheap, firing off a bunch of sub-agents to explore different parts of the codebase is a regular occurrence for the way I work.

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure more agentic coding loops will improve these inefficiencies

Are you joking? Inefficiencies like that are a typical tell for LLM-generated slop. And I'm sure their prompt whisperers are proud of their work.

Yes I was joking

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#164

It takes true corporate dedication to publish technical thought leadership on a page that actively fights your ability to read it.

I don't get why all your replies are on the AI language. Yeah the AI-isms suck and are obvious but is no one else bothered by how this page scrolls?

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#165
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a great analogy, since Bloom filters are guaranteed to not have any false negatives, only false positives. That property would be very useful here, but I don't see how it would be achievable using LLMs.

still a great analogy even if not techincally equivalent

"a filter" is an even better analogy because it is also technically correct

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

still a great analogy even if not techincally equivalent

"a filter" is an even better analogy because it is also technically correct

thats not a analogy, its just a description

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#167
post #162

So this is just delegating certain work to dumber models? I certainly wouldn't use Gemini 2.5 Flash (!!?) for code writing as suggested. I've never had an issue with Codex or Claude reading massive files, they're really good at precise greps.

This is basically exaclty what Cursor started doing when Composer was first released. The app would start using it for exploration tasks, and then as it improved it became the default for writing code and tests too. You can change it of course, but I find it does a pretty decent job if you have a large model directing it. The parent model of course checks the work, but most of the time the handoff is good enough that…

IME Composer 2.5 is too dumb for any serious coding. Grok 4.6 is twice as expensive (but still much cheaper than Claude Opus) and it does a much much better job.

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#168
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The seat license isn't what hurts, it's the tokens." not X, but Y... so this is very likely Opus 5 text, given timing and how it reads. has all the marks of it, one being very weird wording which makes it so hard to read the text.

...the remaining 10% of their Claude usage ;-) > modes are the load-bearing piece: Okay, this write-up is filled with Claudisms.

[deleted]

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#169
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try it on a flaky connection. Every menu (maybe any action of any kind?) makes a roundtrip to the server before displaying, with a very slow timeout. It's crazy how bad it is.

I think they've gotten worse about this as an organization over the last few years(?). Earlier this year an update to their mobile app introduced loading time, and resulting slowness, for opening menus that used to be ~instant. To me that smacks of once having known not to do that, but that knowledge having been lost (or priorities having shifted). More specifically, I'm talking about tapping the '...' on a track for…

That specific thing hasn't been latency free for me for years.

Though I agree it should be.

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#170
I definitely had the situation before that a large file read would suddenly make the context size of my session explode. But I didn't get the need for a cloud component here. So here is a cursor edition of this with no external dependencies: https://github.com/dominicletz/cursor-shunt/

(fully vibe coded)

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