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Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

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Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#321

Post by [deleted] »

hetspookjee wrote: post #299
adastra22 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Next time it does that expensive scan, run order it to keep or update an index on the codebase. It really helps prevent these expansive scans if you have additional markdown files for LLM navigation.

[deleted]

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#323

Post by killix »

guywithahat wrote: post #207

We've started using claude code at work and I don't understand the hype. I've been using codex and grok build at home, and they're both faster and in some cases better. Claude has a tendency to do too much. If I don't ask for unit tests and they're not in my agents.md file, then I probably don't want them. It'll try to make new libraries and classes for things that should just be a new function or a comparison check.…

[flagged]

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#324

Post by palmotea »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #291
hoppp wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the entire team is vibe coding and there is no human audit then there is no way but to vibe code, for sure. I would also just vibe it if there is no responsibility, but if I do it that way I don't even care what happens with the project. I get so detached from it that I stop caring and if it has huge critical bugs..I just don't care anymore because it's not my responsibility or my code at all at that point. I'm ju…

> I just don't care anymore because it's not my responsibility or my code at all at that point Yep, 100%. Business has made it clear they don’t care, so there’s no point in burning one’s energy. Throw the whole thing on auto, check out, and go do something else during the day.

> Throw the whole thing on auto, check out, and go do something else during the day.

If that's what you're doing, you're fucked (in today's society, at least). What happens to your job when they figure out that's what you're doing?

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#325

Post by athrowaway3z »

azinman2 wrote: post #211
athrowaway3z wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bailed on Anthropic the moment they started blocking alternative harnesses like pi on their subscription plans.

If I were anthropic I’d force that too. They offer the harness and if they control the entire pipeline then they can optimize the entire experience. It doesn’t have to be nefarious.

This is kind of a strange comment as it implies a false dichotomy.

Its not 'nefarious' in that its in their best business interests.

But it'd be difficult to take anyone serious who thinks Anthropic's motivation was to improve the UX, and the other effect were by accident. At the time they specifically started blocking based on openclaw prompt text. Its a walled-garden tactic.

A walled garden is nefarious to people who do not want to be inside one.

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#326

Post by adastra22 »

byzantinegene wrote: post #319
adastra22 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that's why i mostly use it for asynchronous work, the inefficiency is something i can bear with because the subscription costs are dirt cheap. if it's token-based, it wouldn't make financial sense.

I need the full context window to get the work done though.

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#327

Post by adastra22 »

ACCount37 wrote: post #159
adastra22 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's tuned for the kinds of tasks where "just try" doesn't get good results. A major complaint with AI code was that AIs struggle with complex codebases, don't respect existing conventions, reinvent functionality multiple times over, etc. So, newer high end AIs are tuned with the "explore/exploit" dial turned towards "explore". You could probably get it to do things "quick and dirty" with prompting, but that, of cour…

I get what you're saying, but these instances are of a different type. It is along the lines of "if I pass None for this parameter, will it default to X or return an error?" and it looks, but finds that the actual logic is distributed across multiple files. And so it quickly falls down that rabbit hole.

All the while, it could have just done a two-line probe test and see what happens when it calls the API with "None" for that parameter. Or just assum it would act as expected and wire in debug logs in case it doesn't.

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#328

Post by ifwinterco »

CSMastermind wrote: post #162
adastra22 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everything about LLMs is inefficient. They have their benefits but watching them reason over things that are painfully obvious, that they've literally investigated before (before a memory compaction), never take a step back aand be like 'this is going too slow let me look for a better way', etc. is painful.

It’s got worse though right? Older models from before everyone went off the deep end with CoT don’t do this and just write the code with 1/10 the token usage.

The downside is the code isn’t as good but it is produced a lot faster and more cheaply and often it’s actually fine.

CoT has made LLMs better (say 50% improvement or something) but increases cost by an order of magnitude. That graph is going in the wrong direction and has been for a while now

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#329

Post by cornedor »

ejpir wrote: post #229
mft_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe related to this minimalism, Pi doesn't come with most of the tools an LLM needs to function efficiently or effectively. I get that a blank slate is the paradigm, and you can add whatever you want, but it's too blank IMO.

what tools are you talking about? Pi has ALL tools the LLM needs to function efficiently and effectively for coding tasks. It can read,write,edit files and can use any bash tool to search files, execute tests and so on. Every time I read this comments I have the feeling you are talking about mcp or sub agents, otherwise this makes no sense at all.

That will increase the amount of initial tokens used, because the tools have to be described somewhere. Maybe not as much as Claude Code, but it could get more if you just randomly keep adding tools.

Re: Claude Code sends 33k tokens before reading the prompt; OpenCode sends 7k

#330

Post by attheballot »

bel8 wrote: post #44
mft_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe related to this minimalism, Pi doesn't come with most of the tools an LLM needs to function efficiently or effectively. I get that a blank slate is the paradigm, and you can add whatever you want, but it's too blank IMO.

It's easy to add using plugins. What do you miss? I ask because I do some heavy work with pi + GLM 5.2 (using opencode Go subscription) and my workflow is plan -> implement.

You know, seeing a total of 3 replies on this topic, I think the lesson here is to, from now on, with comments like this, to clearly state

"Pi has *ALL* the tools, can you name one it does not".

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