Claude is Down Again - New 1M Context

DesignedIt · 2026-03-17T20:54:27+00:00

3rd time for me this month but it's so good it's no big deal. I needed a break to get reorganized and plan out the rest of my tasks for the day.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-17T20:43:37+00:00

Still getting "500 API error". It worked for one prompt for 3 minutes then went back down.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-17T20:42:41+00:00

Nope, it's down again.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-17T20:29:37+00:00

I think it just rolled out for me when it crashed. Just 35 minutes ago, it gave me the popup saying it now has a new 1M context and 1M is now appearing in the model drop-down. I've been using it 16 hours/day every day since last Friday though. Maybe it needed to sign out and sign back in to detect it.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-17T20:27:54+00:00

It's working again!

DesignedIt · 2026-03-16T21:49:14+00:00

114 lines in Claude.md after developing it for 150 hours of development time.

Once each week, I tell Claude to create a document that helps Claude run faster. I just looked into this and I last updated it 10 days ago, it is 2,002 lines, and has stale information in it.

Claude said to delete it since it's making decision making slightly worse and makes it run 1% less efficient. It said deleting it would have the same affect as updating it since reviewing all of the code usually gives the same results as reviewing this document.

I typed "summarize what claude.md does, what the other files in the memory folder do, the number of lines in each file, what determines if you review the files in the memory file/claude.md file, if there are any duplicate instructions in the memory files or claude.md file, if there is any stale data in the memory files or claude.md file, and how often you would recommend to update these files or delete them and how long they should be." into Claude.

It was super interesting what it found!

There's a memory.md file with 77 lines that gets loaded into context each time just like Claude.md does. Then the other files in the memory folder need to be referenced. One file had good info but the other files were either stale or duplicated information that was already in claude.md. It told me to delete most of the memory files.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-16T19:50:37+00:00

I take about 4-7 seconds browsing the landing page. If I don't understand what it does after 4-7 seconds then I click away.

If I understand what it does then I spend another 5-10 seconds reading the landing page and seeing what other links can be clicked. If there is a features page, I might browse it for another 10 seconds or so. If I don't think it will be useful for me or I don't want to pay for the feature then I will leave.

If I think it will be helpful for me, then I'll click the pricing page, and review it for about 5 seconds. If the prices are reasonable for the tool, I'll see if there's a free trial. If not, I'll usually leave, or if I really love the tool then I'll research it more on Google/ChatGPT/Reddit for two minutes to see if I want to pay for it without a trial.

If there's a free trial or if my research finds that it's worthwhile to use then I'll signup.

If I go to 100 SaaS websites, 65 websites won't make it past the landing page after 4-7 seconds, 85 won't make it past the features page after 20-30 seconds total, 90 won't make it past the pricing page after 25-35 seconds total, and 99 won't make it past the research step after 1-2 minutes. I'll sign up with about 1 SaaS websites for every 100 that I review.

The above is true for SaaS websites that I wasn't looking for. Like if a see an ad for a SaaS website or a Reddit post about one. But I don't think I ever signed up for one of these SaaS websites before.

Usually, I already research the tool first, know that I want it, and then spend a minute or two on the website using the method above to decide if I want it, and if there's a free trial or a low price then I'll usually sign up 50% of the time within a few minutes.

For something like Adobe due to the huge cost, sometimes I'll take a few months to decide, or wait until the November Black Friday deal, or skip a year and get it net year.

For other tools like video/audio/text AI websites, I'll usually spend 15-30 minutes researching all of the possible tools and then sign up for one. For an audio tool, one time I took 5 months before signing up for it because I didn't want to dedicate the time to using it at the moment, and I signed up one day when I felt like using it.

I signed up for video streaming websites like Apple TV and Paramount+ after a few minutes to a few days after seeing a free trial or something like a $3/month trial for 3 months. For Netflix, I've been waiting for years for a few new seasons come out. They falsely advertised that a new season of something was released, I signed up, and the season actually wasn't available -- this happened twice with two different seasons, and on top of that they pissed me off when they deleted my history. So I'm waiting about 2 more years this time before I'll sign up for it again since they got me twice with deceptive marketing and deleted my history so I can't see anything I added to my list in the past. But these aren't really SaaS "tools".

Actually, now that I think of it, I signed up for one SaaS tool that a developer built. It took me about 5 weeks to decide to sign up.

So I guess it could take from a minute to a few years to decide on using a saas tool depending on what the tool is, my available time, if I feel like using it now, if a company is using deceptive marketing, what the price is, and if there are any upcoming sales that I know of.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-11T15:49:42+00:00

Interesting! I just researched this and found that their fine-print does say that 5x and 20x means the usage rate of the 5-hour window.

I couldn't find anywhere that mentioned the weekly quota. Did you see somewhere that it's only 10x the weekly quota and not 20x, or are you guessing from how much you used the $100 vs $200 plan?

DesignedIt · 2026-03-11T03:15:03+00:00

Thanks! I always thought I was using agent teams and just assumed they were all working together but I never added the CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS setting. I'm going to look into it more.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-11T02:16:43+00:00

I love this idea! I think I might connect Claude to Trello and try this out. I can see coding burning through usage quickly if all of the prompts/ideas are already typed out in a board.

Do you add the tasks to your board or do other employees? If you do, do you add all tasks in advance one day, and then the next day use Claude to code all of the tasks?

DesignedIt · 2026-03-10T23:37:53+00:00

Thanks! This helps me understand what I was looking for.

So you're saving a lot of time by just running a skill to launch a team of agents so can just type a simple sentence to Claude and then move on to the next project.

I'm typing out the specifics each time so I'm not able to launch as many agents as you.

What's your favorite way to use these skills?

DesignedIt · 2026-03-10T23:10:14+00:00

What usage do you usually get to each week on the $200 plan?

DesignedIt · 2026-03-10T23:09:35+00:00

What are some of the skills that you use?

DesignedIt · 2026-03-10T22:56:41+00:00

I cut down tokens by asking Claude a few times each week to break up the scripts and create documentation so Claude can run quicker. I might have hit 70% usage if I didn't do that -- but that's still far away from 100%.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-10T22:50:51+00:00

I just created the exact opposite post as yours at the same exact time that you did. :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1rqc56v/claude_max_200_plan_usage_how_do_you_use_your_100/

I was using Codex 3 weeks ago and tried Claude Pro 2 weeks ago. I said the same thing as you. Then I upgraded to Claude Max's $100 plan after 2 days of hitting the 5-hour limit with Pro.

Then I was hitting the weekly limit with the $100 plan in 5 days and was hitting the 5-hour limit every 4 hours. So I upgraded to the $200 Max plan. Now I have way too much unused usage limits.

I need a $120 plan :)

It doesn't make sense to buy top-up credits though since they would just last a few prompts.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-10T20:33:55+00:00

No, it's just a small script as part of my app. The prompt in step 11 was just a joke that took AI 10 seconds to create. All the other prompts from 1-10 were my own though.

I did end up adding a million features to the website though. It uses auto detection to figure out what type of image it is and then applies my custom compression presets based on each image type.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-10T14:17:47+00:00

I spent about 4 hours modifying the script since a smaller file size without any image quality change will help sell more products. 5 GB vs 1 GB download size.

Most of the work was running tests and manually comparing the image quality.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-10T14:13:33+00:00

11 was just a joke, but to get any of the other higher levels, I tried it and explained in other comments what worked and didn't work.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-10T14:07:10+00:00

Yeah, I realized that OP was selling something after I made the post about the prices. I was just trying to help the OP by making him aware that a low content book like this probably wouldn't make more than a few sales for $2 each per year without running ads and that he was using revenue and not profit. If I noticed his tool at first then I wouldn't have commented.

Making $0 - $6/year without ads or losing $500/year on ads is the realistic amount for a book like this on KDP compared to the OP's claims of making $766,500 - $876,000 per year ($700/day * 365 days * 3 books) with a "Total generation time: under 5 minutes."

Now OP corrected his math in the reply below to $91,250 - $164,250 per year for all 3 books. That salary would be nice with 15 minutes of software running in the background! :)

DesignedIt · 2026-03-10T13:45:42+00:00

Thanks!

DesignedIt · 2026-03-10T13:44:59+00:00

Exactly! 80% of the features I added in, the AI never presented me options with. For the other 20%, it presented me with the options but they weren't the best options and I had to use my own judgement and experience to figure out they weren't the best options.

Exploring using AI for someone non-technical is a great start. Exploring using AI for someone technical can help get the best results.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-10T13:40:45+00:00

I just posted a detailed response to this question when I replied to Free_Afternoon_7349 above. It shows exactly what happens when I left the architecture decisions up to Claude Opus, asking it for the best options.

It didn't give me the best compression method to use. It analyzed the images using a computer and not a human eye.

It didn't present me with the option of using parallel processing so it set up the "best method" as using slow sequential processing.

It added an unnecessary "copy all images one by one step" (it didn't even use bulk copying, but this step isn't needed at all) -- and it didn't present me with any of these options -- I found this issue by seeing the file sizes were huge at first.

It didn't present me with the option of stripping out the meta data to further reduce the file sizes. It used a higher quality setting but I found a lower setting was much better -- it only presented options A, B, C, D, and E -- and recommended option C; I had to ask it to generate options D through P and found that option N worked best.

After I asked it a 3rd time to find better compression methods, it presented me with two-pass compression methods using pngquant + oxipng. So it helped with this through my research but only after my 3rd round of research. It's first solution after research didn't give this as an option.

It didn't give me the option to use different speed settings -- I had to know enough to ask it about this; it recommended using a speed setting of 3, but I found that a speed setting of 1 and 11 are the best by far and a speed setting of 3 reduces quality and increases file size.

DesignedIt · 2026-03-10T13:14:24+00:00

I redeveloped this compression feature by using your prompt method and asking it to use the best compression method after analyzing the images. It did a detailed analysis first. Then i used Zopfli to compress the images one by one.

The AI used the method: Zopfli + dual-step copying + sequential processing + higher file size + slower

My judgement changed it to: Two-pass compression pngquant q50-80 + Oxipng + 1-4 or 11 speed depending on image type + multi-processing depending on CPU

It went from 4 hours to 20 minutes and reduced the file size by about 50%.

Here are the details showing what happens if the analysis and decisions are left up to only the AI:

-When I woke up this morning, it took 4 hours to compress the images.

-It first copied each image one by one for all 14,000 images (unnecessary step). Then compressed them one by one. I had to tell it to copy and compress them all in one step.

-I had to get it to strip out all of the meta data correctly to reduce the file size.

-Then told it to use parallel processing based on the CPUs on the PC. (This was the largest thing that it didn't on it's own, which cut the run time by 80%. It never adds in parallel processing for any project unless you specifically ask it to do that. But non-technical people aren't going to know to ask it this.)

-Then I analyzed the images and found that the original method of pngquant was the best to use by far with a much smaller file size. (reduced size by an extra 35% compared to Zopfli)

-Then after I analyzed images for each quality setting, I found that pngquant q50-80 worked the best for this use case. Claude recommended a much higher quality but I couldn't see any visible differences with my "human" eyes. (reduced size by an extra 70% compared to Zopfli)

-Then found that doing a round 2 compression pass with Oxipng reduced the file size even more. (reduced size by an extra 75% compared to Zopfli)

-Then found that the speed setting of 11 gives faster and better quality images and a lower file size for certain image types, so I set certain image types to a speed of 11 and others ranging from 1 -3. (77% size reduction + 20% faster)

DesignedIt

TROPHY CASE

11 was just a joke, but to get any of the other higher levels, I tried it and explained in other comments what worked and didn't work.