Bro: superintelligent machine line go up AI AGI software solved automate everything Also bro: Run /clearbetween tasks. This prevents prior irrelevant context from being sent back to the model, which can reduce token usage. Set your model and effort level before you start. Changing either one mid-conversation can bust your prompt cache, which can increase token cost. @-mention files instead of naming them. The file ge…
Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions
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Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very easy to understand: - I'm happy to learn how to use tools efficiently - I like to be able to inspect my tools - I'm against tools changing underneath me Are you against any of these points?
I think I'm happy about the first two. The third I suppose I care less about, just because I've kind of become used to it from decades working on the internet where many businesses/tools/apps are more like services and less like physical tools that never change.
My contention is that we should be building towards less churn, not more. I'm aware that some churn is the cost of engaging in any sort of enterprise, but I'm deeply suspicious of an AI company inserting themselves between me, and the tasks I wish to do with my device -- with a completely opaque system that I can't really "learn".
Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions
#13I mean, it feels hard not to laugh at this type of blog post. My cynical interpretation is that this is a type of passing the buck to engineers in enterprise settings ("Stop spending tokens. Did you read the value maximization blog post? It is your fault.") Oh yes, Claude will do all sorts of different things -- it depends on how you use it! You should totally learn all of these little finicky things ... because now…
Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions
#14Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions
#15Can anyone explain why the prefix cache is tied to effort? I frequently run Fable at xhigh effort to run statistical modeling way above my undergraduate understanding. Claude Fable produces Masters-degree level output, and then I spend lots of round trips asking it to explain different parts to me. The first part absolutely uses the extra effort, but the interrogation exercise is something a much simpler model, or th…
I would be really curious to know as well, why effort is linked to cache as its quite inconveniant. Is it possible the token used to indicate effort is only passed once at the start, not per thinking trace, or quite simply that different efforts have different model weights?
Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions
#16Can anyone explain why the prefix cache is tied to effort? I frequently run Fable at xhigh effort to run statistical modeling way above my undergraduate understanding. Claude Fable produces Masters-degree level output, and then I spend lots of round trips asking it to explain different parts to me. The first part absolutely uses the extra effort, but the interrogation exercise is something a much simpler model, or th…
Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions
#17Part of the cynic in me just wants to ask "why not make a better harness by default?" The other cynic in me knows I'm about to see a hundred post on 'HOW TO 10X CLAUDE" from the ai bros and I'm already tired. I guess if I had to ask something (as someone who doesn't use CC as their daily driver), how much control do you have on subagents and roughly how do define or know when a session is getting too long? I know the…
If you have to explain that someone is "holding it wrong"(1), that is product error, not a user error.
(1) https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/
Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions
#18I mean, it feels hard not to laugh at this type of blog post. My cynical interpretation is that this is a type of passing the buck to engineers in enterprise settings ("Stop spending tokens. Did you read the value maximization blog post? It is your fault.") Oh yes, Claude will do all sorts of different things -- it depends on how you use it! You should totally learn all of these little finicky things ... because now…
dude, if you try to do harness development yourself you will realize that most things said in this blogpost is shared with any ${sufficiently_advanced_harness}. this is not really claude-specific, this is just how this class of tools, OSS or not, works
Am I to believe the creators, knowing full well that the source will, as Boris Cherny put it in a recent interview, be deleted and rewritten from scratch at the release of the next big model?
Further: I'm responding to content in the blog post itself:
> Until pretty recently, the tools you wrote code with were a flat fee (or free). Your editor cost the same whether you fixed one test or fifty that afternoon, so an individual task didn't really have a price of its own.
I find this type of prose ridiculous. It conveys "this is the way things are now, get used to it".
Does that make sense?
Re: Maximizing the value of your Claude Code sessions
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very easy to understand: - I'm happy to learn how to use tools efficiently - I like to be able to inspect my tools - I'm against tools changing underneath me Are you against any of these points?
I think I'm happy about the first two. The third I suppose I care less about, just because I've kind of become used to it from decades working on the internet where many businesses/tools/apps are more like services and less like physical tools that never change.
I've never become used to it. My impression is that the constant churn has accelerated. Plausible drivers are (1) normalize novelty as desirable (like fast fashion), (2) product developer/designer incentive structures that reward revolutionary change over progressive refinement. The global switch to subscription models and continuous deployment didn't help.
> more like services and less like physical tools that never change.
I'm not sure that constant change is a characteristic feature of services, especially not professional services.
It used to be that you bought a piece of software and used that version until you decided it was worth upgrading, like a particular physical tool. The software still evolved, just like the design of physical tools can, in principle, evolve.
All that said, agentic AI tooling is evolving so rapidly I'm not sure an expectation of stability is realistic.