311–320 of 433 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're making the opposite argument. Anthropic is incentivized to use less tokens in Claude Code because people are paying a fixed monthly fee for subscriptions.
Nope, that’s not true, because they want you to pay for the higher subscription bracket.
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.
the amount of system prompt wastage going on in orgs is insane. we identified 400k in annual burn for zero value in just one section of our large company. and the interesting thing about system prompt wastage is its a cost that scales non linearly with subagent use.
I have been using claude code for a big project for a while and I feel like I have optimized my workflow now. Brainstorm - Gemini/Antigravity Plan - Gemini/Antigravity Detailed Plan - Sonnet Coding - Fable Do not use any subagents, especially the default ones. They are dumb. The top level agent works well enough
The only interesting thing is whether OpenCode is more effective at writing code with it's reduced system prompt.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a counterpoint: in a complex project, Fable's "curiosity" may be exactly what you want for an exploration and planning stage - not just for the orchestrator that turns your prompt into different angles with which to explore, but for each subagent whose task is to search the codebase for one of those "angles." If you truly want no stone unturned, letting those subagents spawn their own discoveries, and recursively…
But how is that better than a single agent searching those "angles" sequentially? Unless they are orthogonal they most likely require similar context anyway so multiple sub agent is just wasteful.
I vaguely understand you argument with the context, however is that not solved by sum agents handing their results in to the planner (or a third agent) to run on them again? I'd assume that's what is happening anyway. Let me know if that's wrong
Recently switched to Codex after 6m in Claude. Codex seems more open, it’s easier to follow what the model is doing and the approvals have a better UX. Overall, it just feels more transparent. Cost of switching was close to 0. I don’t like that Claude became more opaque around February, including the system prompts. 33k feels way too much.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a counterpoint: in a complex project, Fable's "curiosity" may be exactly what you want for an exploration and planning stage - not just for the orchestrator that turns your prompt into different angles with which to explore, but for each subagent whose task is to search the codebase for one of those "angles." If you truly want no stone unturned, letting those subagents spawn their own discoveries, and recursively…
The curiosity is inefficient though. So many times I have to stop the agent and tell it to just fucking write the code and try compiling it. Otherwise it will fill its entire context tracing through the program logic to derive from the code itself whether the thing it is about to do would work. It completely fails to notice it can just… try.
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…
I had learnt that trick, so now I explicitly disallow Fable subagents. Yesterday, I wanted to review a complex piece after a large refactoring, and requested a review plan beforehand. The first step was 8 agents + one more to verify the findings (all Fable). Looks good, approved. The verification step turned into an attempt to throw a party with 41 Fable verifiers. It will find a way.