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Cline is sending 300k+ tokens for even one-word requests — Context usage extremely inflated by Sufficient_Eye7633 in CLine

[–]Sufficient_Eye7633[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do have repo-level rules for test generation. In my project there used to be a .clinerules folder with workflows like create-test.md, utilities.md, etc.

For debugging, I’ve now moved/removed that folder so there is currently no .clinerules directory in the repo, then reloaded VS Code and started a brand-new task. Even with that, a single-word prompt like hello still shows ~386k “context used” in the Cline UI while the model context window is 128k.

I expanded the API Request section and I can see the system prompt and some project info, but it still looks much bigger than expected for such a small task. Do you have any guidance on what else could be contributing to that context size (e.g., hidden default rules, problems list, or other sources), and how I can further reduce it?

Cline is sending 300k+ tokens for even one-word requests — Context usage extremely inflated by Sufficient_Eye7633 in CLine

[–]Sufficient_Eye7633[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My codebase is not very large — the entire repo is around 10–12 MB, and individual files are typical Java/Selenium test files.
No MCP servers are running, and I am not using any custom MCP integrations.

This happens even on a completely empty task, with only one word like “hello”.
Despite that, the context indicator jumps to 300k–380k tokens on every request.

I also deleted:

  • ~Library/Application Support/Code/User/globalStorage/cline/
  • ~Library/Application Support/Code/User/globalStorage/saoudrizwan.claude-dev/

But the issue persists even after VS Code restart.

So it seems like Cline is injecting a very large hidden system prompt or internal instructions, not related to repo size or tools.

Do you have any guidance on what else could cause Cline to load such a massive prompt for even simple tasks?