Thank you for the detailed and solid instructions. But my first thought for now: I will be researching the ways to replace every Haiku-Sonnet-Opus reference in this guide with a local LLM (basic automaton) - Gemini (decent job for average tasks, already using) - ChatGPT Pro (GPT 5.4 Pro has it's quirks, but not even close to this level of instability).
I don't want to pay $100/month for the Claude Max plan to spend half of my time optimizing for whatever changes they announced (or NOT announced and gaslighted people about it) in the last hour. I'm not a member of Claude business development team to help them "manage growing demand for Claude".
"Every time you explain something to Claude that you've explained before, you're paying tokens for repetition." That one's going to save people real money. Practical, no fluff, and honest about the trade-offs. This is the kind of guide most people don't realize they need until they've already burned through half their usage.
This is a genuinely helpful article, Jonathan. Thank you! Making the switch to Claude myself, and I was shocked at how quickly the limits set in. After reading this, I know I can be much more efficient.
Fantastic article. I also default to Opus 4.6 Extended Thinking. I actually just downgraded my membership because I found I'm using a fraction of what I'm allotted at the level where I was.
I already use .md files for voice and other tasks, but for me there is still a ton of actionable stuff here.
One thing I really don't like about Claude, especially since the token use is so price dependent, is that there is virtually zero transparency into how many tokens you use or how many you have available. It shows a daily and weekly percentage, but that's very vague IMHO.
This is genuinely actionable insightful and experience based. Most of it i "know", but most of it i needed to hear and action. Especially since I just hit my first 5hr limit on a max 5x plan. Oof.
Really nice list of actionable items here. With the recently reduction, I think this is a really good read for anyone struggling and hitting their limits too early each week.
Very helpful!!! Optimizing system instructions! Moving more into projects. Ending PDF madness. Testing is Haiku can handle what my βI love opusβ addiction doesnβt really need. Turning off connections. Mind spinning with optimizations. Thank you J!
Just cleaning up my 6 most used custom skills in Claude β newsletter writing, visual briefs, brand templates, content extraction cut the skills from 1,391 lines to 535.
A 54% reduction in skill body size!
I think that turns into roughly 2 million fewer tokens per year!
Just from trimming redundant prose out of files I'd already written.
Thought you'd want to know someone took the framework and ran the math.
Loved this. Greek to semi-English for non coders. Extra points for the Easter Egg comment - I do actually read all the way to the bottom since youβll miss important things if you donβt; I would have missed my laugh out loud moment today if I didnβt read the whole thing. Thanks for that!
Reverse prompting: ask me everything you need to know so you can execute.
Reverse reverse prompting: Iβm gonna ask you if you know what to ask me so you can execute.
Thank you for the detailed and solid instructions. But my first thought for now: I will be researching the ways to replace every Haiku-Sonnet-Opus reference in this guide with a local LLM (basic automaton) - Gemini (decent job for average tasks, already using) - ChatGPT Pro (GPT 5.4 Pro has it's quirks, but not even close to this level of instability).
I don't want to pay $100/month for the Claude Max plan to spend half of my time optimizing for whatever changes they announced (or NOT announced and gaslighted people about it) in the last hour. I'm not a member of Claude business development team to help them "manage growing demand for Claude".
"Every time you explain something to Claude that you've explained before, you're paying tokens for repetition." That one's going to save people real money. Practical, no fluff, and honest about the trade-offs. This is the kind of guide most people don't realize they need until they've already burned through half their usage.
This was truly excellent. I just made the leap over to Claude and I can't thank you enough! Easy to read, digest and work against. Amazing!!
Genuinely useful. Thank you
This is a genuinely helpful article, Jonathan. Thank you! Making the switch to Claude myself, and I was shocked at how quickly the limits set in. After reading this, I know I can be much more efficient.
bonus: regardless of what AI you use, these tips just generally give you better results overall!
Another tip if you have multiple subscriptions is do more of the brainstorming on a forgiving model like ChatGPT and leave execution only to Claude.
yeah- that's not a bad idea.
I brainstorm in a different way: start by brain-dumping, then have it ask me clarifying questions.
Fantastic article. I also default to Opus 4.6 Extended Thinking. I actually just downgraded my membership because I found I'm using a fraction of what I'm allotted at the level where I was.
I already use .md files for voice and other tasks, but for me there is still a ton of actionable stuff here.
One thing I really don't like about Claude, especially since the token use is so price dependent, is that there is virtually zero transparency into how many tokens you use or how many you have available. It shows a daily and weekly percentage, but that's very vague IMHO.
Thanks,
Vic
Have you tried "claude /cost" on the cli?
I just did and it's basically asking me questions to build an app. I don't use Claude Code.
This is genuinely actionable insightful and experience based. Most of it i "know", but most of it i needed to hear and action. Especially since I just hit my first 5hr limit on a max 5x plan. Oof.
Really nice list of actionable items here. With the recently reduction, I think this is a really good read for anyone struggling and hitting their limits too early each week.
This sounds really helpful!
Very helpful!!! Optimizing system instructions! Moving more into projects. Ending PDF madness. Testing is Haiku can handle what my βI love opusβ addiction doesnβt really need. Turning off connections. Mind spinning with optimizations. Thank you J!
Just cleaning up my 6 most used custom skills in Claude β newsletter writing, visual briefs, brand templates, content extraction cut the skills from 1,391 lines to 535.
A 54% reduction in skill body size!
I think that turns into roughly 2 million fewer tokens per year!
Just from trimming redundant prose out of files I'd already written.
Thought you'd want to know someone took the framework and ran the math.
I've sent this to like ten people this week. SO helpful!! Becoming a permanent open tab fixture in my browser.
Loved this. Greek to semi-English for non coders. Extra points for the Easter Egg comment - I do actually read all the way to the bottom since youβll miss important things if you donβt; I would have missed my laugh out loud moment today if I didnβt read the whole thing. Thanks for that!
Great topic. Iβll add to it!
https://procureandprosper.substack.com/p/how-to-budget-for-claude-seats-tokens?r=1vdkei&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you for this. I turned it into a skill to save me from my drunken sailor token usage problem.
Very helpful thanks.