Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#1

Post by cebert » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 11:38 PM UTC

Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%
engineering.atspotify.com

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#2

Post by solenoid0937 » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 12:30 AM UTC

So this is just delegating certain work to dumber models? I certainly wouldn't use Gemini 2.5 Flash (!!?) for code writing as suggested.

I've never had an issue with Codex or Claude reading massive files, they're really good at precise greps.

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#3

Post by tetrisgm » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 12:46 AM UTC

This is just offshoring but for models

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#4

Post by tolugenius » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 12:48 AM UTC

Isn't this a somewhat standard multi-model setup? there's nothing ground breaking here, just delegate claude to plan -> smaller model for implementation.

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#5

Post by jnwatson » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 12:48 AM UTC

It cuts token usage because they are using a different service with a different token budget for the reader/code writer tasks.

You can also just delegate this to subagents with Claude Code (though you have a more limited choice of models unless you swap the cheaper models via OpenRouter).

I'm OK using a dumb model as a smart grep, but the whole point of using the frontier models is using their intelligence for the hard stuff like coding.

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#6

Post by BottieZimmie » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:00 AM UTC

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Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#7

Post by fif7y » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:08 AM UTC

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Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#8

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:08 AM UTC

solenoid0937 wrote: post #2

So this is just delegating certain work to dumber models? I certainly wouldn't use Gemini 2.5 Flash (!!?) for code writing as suggested. I've never had an issue with Codex or Claude reading massive files, they're really good at precise greps.

[deleted]

Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#9

Post by Buoylog » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:26 AM UTC

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Re: Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%

#10

Post by bensyverson » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:35 AM UTC

solenoid0937 wrote: post #2

So this is just delegating certain work to dumber models? I certainly wouldn't use Gemini 2.5 Flash (!!?) for code writing as suggested. I've never had an issue with Codex or Claude reading massive files, they're really good at precise greps.

Yes, this makes little sense. It looks like it's a way to avoid having Claude read or write your code.

And why stop at 90%? I have this one weird trick to reduce Claude Code token use by 100%: use a different harness and model!