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I burned all my tokens researching how to save tokens

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Re: I burned all my tokens researching how to save tokens

#181

Post by a_c »

My own set of heuristics

1. Use less subagents. The act of using subagent already needs dumping adequate amount of context for subagent to work effectively

2. Refactor when file grows large. Reasonably scoped files is easier to understand, for both human and agents, and consume less tokens because less guessing which section of the file to read

3. More capable models for planning, learning. Cheap models for execution. Same for human teams, senior member for higher level planning while junior member more on the act of translation of idea into code

4. I wasn't doing any fancy stuff that opus can't handle

5. Consult a second opinion for things you are not sure. (I have made a skill specifically for that)

6. Audit how your habit correlates with token consumption. I found out a skill a use frequently is using a lot of context just so a subagent can get all the context. (made a tool to audit claude specifically)

Re: I burned all my tokens researching how to save tokens

#184

Post by bkotrys »

a_c wrote: post #181

My own set of heuristics 1. Use less subagents. The act of using subagent already needs dumping adequate amount of context for subagent to work effectively 2. Refactor when file grows large. Reasonably scoped files is easier to understand, for both human and agents, and consume less tokens because less guessing which section of the file to read 3. More capable models for planning, learning. Cheap models for execution…

The audit point is especially interesting. Is your Claude token-audit tool available anywhere?

Re: I burned all my tokens researching how to save tokens

#185

Post by jurgenburgen »

stavros wrote: post #79
dofm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the details! These are precisely the kind of things I want to hear about because they are self-contained and I can judge against the kind of stuff I do. I am quite interested in experimenting with it for migrations, because for example I have a set of sites written in older Nuxt and Vue and Buefy that need refreshing (and the frontend ported to that UI-agnostic Buefy replacement whose name escapes me at…

You're welcome! LLMs definitely help with the migrations, there were definitely a few iterations because the surface area was massive, but overall it took the project from "will never be prioritised" to "I can work on it on and off when in boring meetings", which was a massive win. I haven't found that LLMs help with CAD at all, but YMMV. As for sharing here, the last time I shared something with "here's something I…

> I can work on it on and off when in boring meetings

That’s not a sign of a healthy org. If you’re in a meeting it’s disrespectful not to be present. If you think a meeting is not useful you should reject it.

Re: I burned all my tokens researching how to save tokens

#188

Post by stavros »

jurgenburgen wrote: post #185
stavros wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're welcome! LLMs definitely help with the migrations, there were definitely a few iterations because the surface area was massive, but overall it took the project from "will never be prioritised" to "I can work on it on and off when in boring meetings", which was a massive win. I haven't found that LLMs help with CAD at all, but YMMV. As for sharing here, the last time I shared something with "here's something I…

> I can work on it on and off when in boring meetings That’s not a sign of a healthy org. If you’re in a meeting it’s disrespectful not to be present. If you think a meeting is not useful you should reject it.

Sometimes I'm in a meeting where the item being discussed doesn't relate to me, and that's a good chance to put another turn in the LLM.

Re: I burned all my tokens researching how to save tokens

#189

Post by Thanemate »

password4321 wrote: post #116
dominotw wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what did you ship?

Most of "What are you working on?" is AI assisted; not much is shipped. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=working%20author%3Adavid927&so...

Checking all the past "what are you working on?" threads just to realize that, somewhere in August 2024 stuff just exploded and the average thread goes reached ~1000 messages, from ~50 pre-August.

Re: I burned all my tokens researching how to save tokens

#190

Post by BLKNSLVR »

resonious wrote: post #20
dofm wrote: post #12

It sometimes feels to me that cloud AI providers have convinced people that cloud AI is worth it because of all the ways people have been able to use cloud AI to write blog posts about using cloud AI to make cloud AI more efficient for something that they haven't shipped yet and aren't really ready to talk about.

Trust me there are plenty of us using cloud AI to actually ship stuff. We just aren't writing blog posts about it.

... replying to internet comments to reassure the fact that cloud AI is worth it because we're 'this close' to shipping a product that allows more efficient usage of cloud AI ...

But seriously, a friend of mine has been both amazed and frustrated in equal measure by cloud AI, and I think the frustration part is resultant from the new precedent set by the amazing parts.

... his project is as-yet unshipped.

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