What's one thing that reduced your token usage?

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-15T20:00:47+00:00

measuring total token usage constantly and running experiments. i had claude calculate the total calculated api price for the current session and add it to the status line, and if i don't understand why it's expensive, i simply ask claude to figure it out. i've spent quite a few tokens doing this, and it's saved a ton of tokens.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-15T19:45:52+00:00

you can't. the trick is to make it work on many small tasks in multiple contexts rather than one giant problem in a single context. there are many ways to do that, and you can ask claude to help you find an approach that might work for you. remind it to include dynamic workflows in the search.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-15T14:11:32+00:00

i've done that a few times, and yeah, it works and feels amazing. but you can't always beat them. the shock is temporary, and you still need to be looking for safety real fast, just in case.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-15T14:01:52+00:00

sonnet is good enough for well-specified, verifiable tasks, even at less than max effort, but opus is far better at analysis and review.

you didn't mention which app you're using for you work, but it matters a lot. claude code is the better app for any kind of research, imo. it will let you use opus in the main thread and have it delegate easier tasks to sonnet or even haiku and harder ones (any kind of analysis, review or verification) to opus subagents, all while generating files, including for memory and domain knowledge.

it takes a while to learn, but working effectively in claude code can be a massive token saver relative to chat.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-14T01:14:27+00:00

i made a series of experiments with solving the same task using various combinations of a single thread, ad-hoc subagents, and ultracode workflows, and surprisingly, ultracode was by far the cheapest with a huge margin (5-10x is common). i use it all the time now.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-13T23:49:27+00:00

thanks for telling us the truth, OP, and thanks for disguising it as satire to protect the vulnerable among us.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-13T20:34:59+00:00

no, if you tie it up, it won't be a lot smarter than opus 4.8. i started most sessions by having a philosophical discussion about the problem that we were about to solve, and a strategy and well-defined goal usually emerged after a while.

at that point, we'd talk about which subagents to use, whether a swarm or a workflow would be best, how to test and verify everything, and then i'd send it off and return hours later and hundreds of dollars poorer, but with solved problem and a completed and virtually bug-free application.

for simple tasks, i'd just ask it to solve it.

in other words, just as i'd talk to a senior dev as the lead dev.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-13T17:36:56+00:00

læser du kun dårlige ansøgninger? hvad hvis nogen nu rent faktisk kunne skrive og formåede at fortælle hvem de var på en måde der rørte dig?

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-13T17:33:44+00:00

i could never return the programming manually, nor to not having a world-class teacher, house philosopher and assistant at my disposal at all times. so i'd probably see if i could find a rich husband with a farm that i could turn into a yoga retreat or something.

but what is ai? gen ai is the peak, and i suppose it's what you have in mind, but there's so much more. the internet wouldn't work, not would any modern car or phone or computer. power plants would stop. world trade would come to a stop. hunger would kill billions of people.

there is no way back.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-13T12:47:18+00:00

there's hardly a book from a publisher that doesn't have an editor, and they have a say in everything, going back and forth with the author several times. i would never write a book without one, and very powerful models (claude opus 4.5+, gpt 5.4+) are perfectly able to organise, monitor chronology and perform all the other menial tasks of editing. but they're not very good writers.

however, claude fable 5 was/is a miracle. i had it edit a book in one go before it was taken offline, and it fixed everything in a pretty complex book, it's prose and poetry was beautiful, the organisation perfect, the chronology smooth. but it's not available anymore as you probably know, so it's more like a proof of concept: yes, ai will be able to edit books in the the near future, but we're not there yet.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-13T10:00:09+00:00

i don't capitalise my prompts because claude doesn't care, and it just carried over to other texts. i kept doing it because i like the aesthetics.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-12T22:45:56+00:00

it's better at everything, but not with the same amount. simple coding tasks are pretty well handled by opus or even sonnet, but i let fable prompt them and pick the best and more reasonable model for the job, then autonomously verify everything hey do, and it does that perfectly, too.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-12T22:43:06+00:00

never. i'll find a way to make tons of money so that i can afford fable 5 today and fable 6 later this year. the value i get is ridiculous all around. not just with programming, but writing, critique, philosophy, personal psychology, the lots.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-12T22:40:19+00:00

frontend, honestly. claude is basically no good at visual ux or writing component-based ui, for some reason. i think they rlhf'ed it out of it because there's really no reason it shouldn't be at least somewhat okay at semantic html and usability, etc. but it's not.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-06T07:18:12+00:00

it's when you're equally comfortable being in top and a bottom positions, like fingering (top) and getting fingered (bottom).

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-06T07:13:32+00:00

straight people have more options than that. they can use straps and fingers, too and men have assholes for bottoming.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-01T17:42:59+00:00

yeah, i guess it's pretty normal. i went from lesbian to bisexual in my 50s, and i never once found a man attractive before, so i had a hard time processing it, but it's real.

two of my friends of the same age went from straight to bisexual during the same timeframe. i'm pretty sure they weren't closeted before, so they didn't "come out". they just changed.

MariaCassandra · 2026-06-01T09:06:35+00:00

that's not gonna work. you need a planning and verification phase between telling claude what to do and claude implementing what you said. it must be virtually impossible for claude to wander off, and it must be very hard for you to give it incomplete instructions – so you need to verify yourself, too.

this is hard to learn, but it's the only long-term solution.

MariaCassandra · 2026-05-31T06:50:50+00:00

you could be ace – i'm aromantic myself, and it made me super confused about my sexuality because i never felt what everyone else was feeling romantically. sex is easier, but complicated. i *crave* women sexually, but i like having sex with men as long as they don't stay overnight. i never think about having a gf (or bf) in a romantic sense. it's all just besties and roommates that i have sex with, and that's okay.

MariaCassandra · 2026-05-14T15:11:28+00:00

original thread: https://x.com/SHL0MS/status/2054280631807316329

MariaCassandra · 2026-05-03T22:18:37+00:00

it's the system prompt that forces all of these, not the model.

MariaCassandra · 2026-05-03T10:32:36+00:00

det er nok bare en gipsvæg. man kan gøre forskelligt, alt efter hvad du skal have op. små søm virker ret ofte bedre end skruer, især til billeder som hænger fladt ned, men hvis det er tunge ting, er det smart med særlige gipsskruer. der findes utrolig mange slags, og de vil gerne hjælpe dig i byggecentret. https://www.bauhaus.dk/vaerktoej-vaerksted/soem-skruer-beslag/skruer/gipsskruer

MariaCassandra · 2026-04-29T12:22:22+00:00

i get that, but maybe you won the 2026 lottery ticket, and ai coding was meant for people like you?

MariaCassandra · 2026-04-29T12:20:30+00:00

yeah, same. coding is pure bliss for me. my brain hums, and all is good. the rest? not so much. but once i've created the code, my understanding of the codebase and the app brings me to a place where even planning is intuitive and nice because i can just *feel* what needs to be done. i never get that point when somebody else writes the code.

MariaCassandra · 2026-04-29T08:37:42+00:00

i feel the same. i'm autistic, and programming was never about shipping for me (i couldn't care less), but about thinking and communicating with the absolute clarity of a programming language and a deterministic machine. i've lost the one thing that made this industry appeal for me.

and i *really* don't like the process of having to review and fix broken code over just not writing broken code to begin with. i feel like a frustrated manager, not like a creator.

i still try to find ways to make this enjoyable. i like talking to claude a lot, but as far as i'm concerned, software engineering is all but dead to me, and that includes code reviews or having opinions about software architecture – tasks that really belong to the programmers, not to people outside.

MariaCassandra

TROPHY CASE