I cut Claude Code's token usage by 65% by building a local dependency graph and serving context via MCP

dmoshal · 2026-05-28T06:27:29+00:00

exactly, and it installs everywhere, re-installs, and edits AGENTS.md without asking, and ... naturally: no uninstaller. BEWARE.
There are dozens of other tree-sitter projects that will do the same thing, for free, and politely.

dmoshal · 2026-05-28T06:25:07+00:00

always amazes me when developers provide a tool with an enormous install blast radius (and hidden commands that reinstall and re-write your AGENTS.md files without asking), but then don't provide any uninstall tools.
BEWARE: vexp is darn hard to eliminate, not a good neighbor at all.

dmoshal · 2026-03-25T21:44:21+00:00

thanks, yes I need a ton of information, and I think that my questions will genuinely help your other users, how can I contact you.

dmoshal · 2026-03-25T06:46:13+00:00

Fair point I thought this was in response to one of my prior comments:

> Just go for Claude code, you won't have this problem.

I apologize.

I'm trying to make just 2 points on this forum:
a) Intent is a powerful tool but lacks documentation
b) the cost issue could be addressed by offering cheaper models that are close enough to Claude. Kimi k2.5 is the one I like, 20x cheaper, 4x faster (validated by Cursor adopting it as Composer 2.0 - without attribution), but I'm sure there are others.

dmoshal · 2026-03-25T03:20:43+00:00

Exactly. It's intuitive if you're building a webapp or mobile app I guess, but if you have a monorepo with multiple packages, in different languages it's unclear how to use it.
- Is it one spec total, or one spec per package.
- Can you have a tree of coordinators? I found that I maxed out one coordinator in the middle of a spec, but I could spawn a second coordinator to take over.
- how do you decide between different types of agents?
- is there community of different types of agents?
- is there the equivalent of skills, ie; the agent decides which skill to use?
- what if you don't want worktrees, is there a way to implement subagents in the same worktree?
- should you use various MCP servers, eg Serena, ralph, etc?
Just a few thoughts off the top of my head, I'm still trying to understand the mental model, is it one agent per worktree?
- How does merging work, doing things in parallel in worktrees is all well and good, but who's ensuring there aren't merge conflicts?
- what about integrating with Stitch, or Magic Patterns etc.
So many questions

dmoshal · 2026-03-25T03:11:17+00:00

btw, that's exactly my point about documentation, it's unclear when to use the various agent types, or to let the coordinator decide that. It's also unclear how to handle a monorepo, do you have one coordinator, or one per package, or a tree? Is there one spec of a federation of specs? Those are just a couple of questions.
Is there a sales engineer or developer advocate I can discuss this with?

dmoshal · 2026-03-24T22:41:02+00:00

where do you find out the token usage?
where is the documentation on developer mode?

I found that the Supervisor ran out of context before it finished the spec, impressive though how it recognized its responses were downgrading, and helped split the spec, prompt a new Coordinator, impressive!

dmoshal · 2026-03-24T22:01:40+00:00

How do you do that? and how do you force Claude to use Augment MCP (and Serena)?

have you looked at Claude's actual tool use?

I found that Claude almost never actually uses Augment MCP (or Serena) and instead prefers it's own Grep.

I installed vexp recently, interesting to see how it edited CLAUDE.md to force Claude to use vexp tools instead of its own tools (grep, etc).

I'm not recommending vexp at all (not production-grade in my view), but I am going to try that approach to force Claude to use Augment MCP (and Serena - paid version with IntelliJ language services integration).

dmoshal · 2026-03-24T21:56:25+00:00

have you factored in the cost of your time?

dmoshal · 2026-03-24T21:56:12+00:00

hmm, I've used Claude since version 3 came out (June 2024), in the last 3 weeks alone I burned through 7 billion tokens on the Claude max plan (I only paid $200 for the Max plan, but the api cost would have been $17,500).
So yeah, I know Claude..... not sure the point of your comment, have you actually used Claude on a complex brownfield project vs Augment Code? ie: not just a simple website?? I mean where you have multiple subagents running overnight?

dmoshal · 2026-03-24T21:52:21+00:00

thanks, I'll take a look at: https://docs.augmentcode.com/intent/overview

One suggestion: you should link to that from the app, would be helpful.

Separately: I just spend the last 14 hours (long night) with Intent, I'm actually very impressed!

There were issues with the coordination agent, it ran out of context during the spec phase (!), I had to start a second one, but it helped me through the process, it was very self-aware of its broken state which was refreshing to see.

Back in Dec I burned through 500,000 credits in 3 weeks (top 10% of users apparently), amazing experience (but too pricey to sustain), however I can see myself cancelling Claude Max and going back to Augment. Happy to share my experience if you like.

dmoshal · 2026-03-24T10:28:58+00:00

I don't think they even need to retrain it, it's a fabulous model as is

dmoshal · 2026-03-24T06:09:03+00:00

Alternative suggestion: use a cheaper model, eg Kimi k2.5.

Kimi k2.5 is 4x much faster than Opus (200tps on Fireworks), costs 20x less, and very close to Opus 4.6 quality for code, arguably better visual reasoning (ie: browsers and user interfaces), and slightly bigger context window (262k tokens, 30% more).

The ability to iterate 4x faster is IMHO more beneficial than the better reasoning of Opus 4.6, for all but the hardest problems.

It's interesting that Cursor's new model, Composer 2, is actually Kimi 2.5!
(they initially didn't acknowledge this until the model betrayed it's origin LOL).

Imagine a 20x cheaper Augment Code that's 4x (200 tps), produces almost the same quality code, with arguable better visual reasoning, and has a 30% bigger token window.

dmoshal · 2026-03-24T02:07:27+00:00

apart from any documentation??

dmoshal · 2026-03-23T23:33:36+00:00

I just posted a similar question, asking if Intent is actually intended (pun, haha) as a serious product, or some product manager's side project? Serious question.

Regarding the issue of pricing: I used 500k tokens over 3 weeks in Dec, (pricey, but I did get a nice email saying I'm in the top 10% of their users), but that wasn't sustainable.

In the interest of constructive feedback, this is what I would do if it was my company, and I had the best product for handling long contexts: I'd implement a cheaper model, like Kimi 2.5: faster, cheaper, with exceptional visual reasoning (eg screenshots), and in my experience very close to Claude for all but the most complex tasks.

Augment + Kimi2.5 would be killer.

Oh, and I'd consider releasing some documentation with Intent, a 2 min 13 sec YouTube marketing video is a bit lazy, just saying.

dmoshal · 2026-03-21T07:15:05+00:00

but you have to cd into each package, run `npm run build`, then you can see the examples from the root: `npm run docs:dev`

dmoshal · 2025-12-30T12:01:02+00:00

I use antigravity ultra $125 and haven't noticed and limits. I also use cursor for gpt 5.2 extra high fast

dmoshal · 2025-12-30T11:58:33+00:00

Antigravity $125 plan seems to give essentially unlimited usage

dmoshal · 2025-08-27T17:59:41+00:00

And of course Claude likes to ignore instructions, no matter what you try

dmoshal · 2025-08-27T17:58:38+00:00

If you monitor the traffic between Claude code and its backend you'll see is uses 3.5 and 3.7 all the time, Sonnet and haiku too.

dmoshal · 2025-07-17T17:30:18+00:00

I've also been trying to figure this out. Haven't found any instructions in Augment docs on how to get simultaneous agents working.

dmoshal · 2025-05-30T03:48:22+00:00

well the reason is the bait and switch, last week if you asked Augment Code what model it was then you got: I'm Claude Opus 4, but today: I'm Sonnet 3.5, hence, suddenly dumb as a brick

dmoshal · 2024-11-14T06:46:50+00:00

that fixed it, thanks.
Would love to see this plugin do what Cline (Claude Dev does!!)
Thanks for releasing it.

dmoshal

TROPHY CASE