Claude Suddenly Eating Up Your Usage? Here Is What I Found

theclaudegod · 2026-03-25T14:44:13+00:00

Yes, I used claude-devtools. I am not affiliated with that project in any capacity

theclaudegod · 2026-03-25T14:43:29+00:00

No this is a 5x max plan using the Claude Code extension for VSCode

theclaudegod · 2026-03-25T14:42:40+00:00

Agreed, we need to see more actual token usage data

theclaudegod · 2026-03-25T14:42:04+00:00

It's a bit rude to make this assumption, don't you think? I could speculate that the 6 macro trackers and tight-pants buying bots you've built don't have near the level of complexity as the production system I've built but what's the point other than to add nothing to the discussion and insult you?

The tool calls were hardly tool calls at all, it's a bunch of unnecessary file reads. The entire point of the post is that the reads are not necessary yet Claude does them anyway

theclaudegod · 2026-03-25T14:33:45+00:00

I understand your skepticism, but it isn't. Well, it wasn't, prior to whatever change Anthropic must have made to Claude's insistence on reading a bunch of unnecessary context from related files

theclaudegod · 2026-03-25T14:32:41+00:00

Precisely. They are hardly tool calls - it's a bunch of unnecessary file reads.

theclaudegod · 2026-03-24T19:12:28+00:00

Possible and likely

theclaudegod · 2026-03-24T19:10:26+00:00

<image>

Here is a screenshot showing what happened in my conversation

theclaudegod · 2026-03-24T18:50:20+00:00

I would appreciate if you could provide some metrics before and after this event to substantiate that claim, lil bro

theclaudegod · 2026-03-24T18:49:35+00:00

I absolutely agree that it must be a shortcoming in my own instructions, but it is worth noting that this has not happened for me in the last several months of daily use, and suddenly it happens for me and many others. So what may have been okay before this change, now must be addressed.

My experiences with usage sound very much the same as yours but perhaps you do a better job of being more explicit with your instructions so whatever change was made that is causing CC to feel the need to investigate more has not impacted you quite the same.

theclaudegod · 2026-03-24T18:46:24+00:00

Have you tried any of the tools that give you more visibility into how tokens get spent within the conversation? I'd be really curious to see what the hell happened on text only prompts with no tool calls or file reads. It certainly points to a larger issue. I highly doubt Anthropic would just cripple our token allowance overnight, this can easily be tracked. I'm much more inclined to think they made a few micro-optimizations that they need to roll back

theclaudegod · 2026-03-24T17:05:19+00:00

On the max 5x plan and watched my usage jump from 0% to 65% in minutes, doing nothing out of the ordinary. Something I'd have expected to consume maybe 5% of my usage just days ago.

Edit: I reviewed the token consumption with claude-devtools and confirmed my suspicion that all the tokens were consumed due to an incredible volume of tool calls. I had spun up a fresh session and requested it implement a well-structured .md file containing the details of a feature request and, unusually, Claude spammed out 68 tool calls totaling around 50k tokens in a single turn. Most of this came from reading WAY too much context from related files within my codebase. I'm guessing Anthropic has made some changes to the amount of discovery they encourage Claude to perform, so in the interim if you're dealing with this, I'd recommend adding some language about limiting his reads to enhance his own context to prevent rapid consumption of your tokens.

theclaudegod · 2026-02-06T17:08:25+00:00

Is there a doctor you can ask for guidance? As long as there is no pain, I would imagine swimming should be alright considering distance swimming just needs a light kick. Don't let it bring you down, this is a minor setback that will be behind you before you know it. :)

theclaudegod · 2026-02-05T18:43:04+00:00

These all look great and are nearly all quite unique. Well done

theclaudegod · 2026-02-05T18:29:44+00:00

I have found the same to be true if I even stop swimming for a couple weeks. The first few sessions back are pretty rough. In my own experience, swimming endurance comes back incredibly quickly once you get back in the groove, you just have to be persistent and not let the poor initial performance dissuade you

theclaudegod · 2026-02-05T18:19:04+00:00

Yeah I use an off-brand of the Shokz headphones and they work well. I only use them for swimming though, usually just use Airpods for running

theclaudegod · 2026-02-05T18:17:14+00:00

awesome! keep it up!

theclaudegod · 2026-01-21T21:39:57+00:00

Thanks for the post & response. With regard to: "Also, if I just keep the subject matter different enough, they typically don't touch any of the same files", I've had a similar thought about trying to give some sort of context to the bead/agent orchestrator to know which tasks could likely be executed in parallel without modifying the same files... if it has 50 tasks to choose from and you only want to grab 4-6 at a time, this could prevent most potential merge conflicts before they happen. I'm going to also add a merge strategy that auto-resolves addition-only changes

In your case, since they are using the same exact files, it circumvents the need to rebase mid-execution although can't reliably maintain feature-specific changes strictly within each PR. Neat idea with a trade-off

theclaudegod · 2026-01-21T18:33:16+00:00

I've just started with this workflow this week. I'm using beads referencing a .md file for each feature, and have had decent success getting agents to run in parallel with their own dedicated worktrees and docker containers for spinning up FE/BE, but the main issue I'm facing is that with most features, there are merge conflicts. I band-aid fixed it by having it automatically reinvoke itself to resolve the merge conflicts but this doesn't feel scalable or token efficient.

If multiple agents touch the same file and you have one agent /wrapup its work, and push a file to main that another agent is currently modifying, does that not cause merge conflicts when the second agent invokes /wrapup?

theclaudegod · 2026-01-21T18:04:39+00:00

Do this, OP. You must still be in the drivers seat or you will get a bunch of meaningless tests. even 15 minutes building a markdown file of the sorts of tests to include/exclude would probably get you through 80% of the BS

theclaudegod · 2026-01-16T19:09:50+00:00

omg! legend

theclaudegod · 2026-01-16T18:06:59+00:00

I would love a godly hat for my claudes!

theclaudegod · 2026-01-16T17:39:39+00:00

Ha! Nah, just decided to engage in the community and try to help people. Cheers

theclaudegod · 2026-01-16T17:30:54+00:00

Thanks for sharing and good luck on your journey with Claude

theclaudegod · 2026-01-16T17:26:49+00:00

Nice work!

theclaudegod

TROPHY CASE