Doesn’t this huge claude.md file increase the input tokens?
Universal Claude.md – cut Claude output tokens
91–100 of 192 posts
Re: Universal Claude.md – cut Claude output tokens
#92The whole “Code Output” section is horrifying especially with how I have seen Claude operate in a large monorepo. This mode of operation results in hacks on top of shaky hacks on top of even flimsier, throw away, absolutely sloppy hacks. An example - using dict like structs instead of classes. Claude really likes to load all of the data that it can aggressively even if it’s not needed. This further exhibits itself as…
The best way to approach these (imo) is to pick out some things you think will be helpful. It's a giant vibe fest on this front since there is little in the way of comprehensive evals and immense variation in what people do. Having iterated a bunch on the tone / output formatting, it doesn't seem to impact capabilities (based on my vibe-vals)
Re: Universal Claude.md – cut Claude output tokens
#93From the file: "Answer is always line 1. Reasoning comes after, never before." LLMs are autoregressive (filling in the completion of what came before), so you'd better have thinking mode on or the "reasoning" is pure confirmation bias seeded by the answer that gets locked in via the first output tokens.
Is this true? Non-reasoning LLMs are autoregressive. Reasoning LLMs can emit thousands of reasoning tokens before "line 1" where they write the answer.
Re: Universal Claude.md – cut Claude output tokens
#94I told mine to remove all unnecessary words from a sentence and talk like caveman, which should result in another 50% savings ;)
I'm a fan of Dr Seuss mimicry, the extra tokens are worth the entertainment.
Re: Universal Claude.md – cut Claude output tokens
#95It seems the benchmarks here are heavily biased towards single-shot explanatory tasks, not agentic loops where code is generated: https://github.com/drona23/claude-token-efficient/blob/main/... And I think this raises a really important question. When you're deep into a project that's iterating on a live codebase, does Claude's default verbosity, where it's allowed to expound on why it's doing what it's doing when it…
> No explaining what you are about to do. Just do it. Came here for the same reason. I can't calculate how many times this exact section of Claude output let me know that it was doing the wrong thing so I could abort and refine my prompt.
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Re: Universal Claude.md – cut Claude output tokens
#96> Answer is always line 1. Reasoning comes after, never before. lol, closed
the last line is a good one to have, unless you run a service for other users
Re: Universal Claude.md – cut Claude output tokens
#97Is there a "universal AGENTS.md" for minimal code & documentation outputs? I find all coding agents to be verbose, even with explicit instructions to reduce verbosity.
iteration and co-authoring is the strategy I've settled on
Re: Universal Claude.md – cut Claude output tokens
#98That output is there for a reason. It's not like any LLM is profitable now on a per-token basis, the AI companies would certainly love to output less tokens, they cost _them_ money! The entire hypothesis for doing this is somewhat dubious.
Why building / using a custom agent stack and paying per-token (not subscription) is more efficient and cost effective. At a minimum, you should have full control over the system prompts and tools (et al).
Re: Universal Claude.md – cut Claude output tokens
#99As with all of these cure-alls, I'm wary. Mostly I'm wary because I anticipate the developer will lose interest in very little time and also because it will just get subsumed into CC at some point if it actually works. It might take longer but changing my workflow every few days for the new thing that's going to reduce MCP usage, replace it, compress it, etc is way too disruptive. I'm generally happy with the base Cl…
Agreed. Projects like these tend to feel shortsighted. Lately, I lean towards keeping a vanilla setup until I’m convinced the new thing will last beyond being a fad (and not subsumed by AI lab) or beyond being just for niche use cases. For example, I still have never used worktrees and I barely use MCPs. But, skills, I love.
In my view an unappreciated benefit of the vanilla setup is you can get really accustomed to the model’s strengths and weaknesses. I don’t need a prompt to try to steer around these potholes when I can navigate on my own just fine. I love skills too because they can be out of the way until I decide to use them.
Re: Universal Claude.md – cut Claude output tokens
#100It seems the benchmarks here are heavily biased towards single-shot explanatory tasks, not agentic loops where code is generated: https://github.com/drona23/claude-token-efficient/blob/main/... And I think this raises a really important question. When you're deep into a project that's iterating on a live codebase, does Claude's default verbosity, where it's allowed to expound on why it's doing what it's doing when it…
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