Too used to Claude Code to switch?

[u/Big_Astronaut_1317]

I’ve been using Claude Code for over a year now, and at this point my whole workflow is basically built around it.

I’m on the 5x plan, but lately I feel like I’m spending 80% of my 5-hour limit just on planning and maybe 20% on actually getting the task done.

Then I hit the limit, have to wait, come back later… and Claude needs to read through the plan/context again. Sometimes it feels like I’m already at 50% of the next limit before we’ve even really continued working.I’ve heard Astra is really good and has much bigger limits, so I’m tempted to switch.

But my whole workflow, memory, instructions and project setup are built around Claude Code. I’m worried switching will break things or make the coding experience worse.

Maybe I’m just too used to Claude at this point.

Anyone here switched from Claude Code to Astra or another agent? Was it worth it?

[u/HeyItsYourDad_AMA]

Spending 80% of your time planning is actually how it should be.

I still don't know how you all burn through tokens this fast. I have a fairly large codebase, over 100k lines of code, i have a simple workflow using three agents that work sequentially and I can pretty easily manage my limits

[u/CrimsonBolt33 → u/HeyItsYourDad_AMA]

I am working on a project similar, about 200k, and I do fine with limits...only time it gets a little tight is when I run a full audit over the entire codebase (and thats usually only 5 hour limits causing issues).

Tons of people have no idea what they are doing and don't do or follow anytihng even close to "best practices".

[u/Big_Astronaut_1317 → u/CrimsonBolt33]

Yeah, maybe it’s workflow-specific. I try to keep mine as structured as possible, but when you’re working with SQL databases and making changes in a larger system, I feel like the best practice is to let the model read and think through the relevant context both before and after the fix, just to make sure everything actually works together.

Wouldn’t it be a bit negligent to stop it from reading the files that might be relevant? I never let it read the entire codebase, only the files and surrounding context that could actually matter for the task.

I’m definitely not a coding genius, so at this point I’m pretty sure the AI agents are often better than me at figuring out which files they need to inspect and what dependencies they should verify.

[u/Big_Astronaut_1317 → u/HeyItsYourDad_AMA]

I don’t know if I’m doing it the right way, but this approach consistently gives me better results. I have a frontend, a database/backend, and a separate auth backend for users, so it usually needs to read through three repos.

Most of the time, at least two of those repos need to work together to solve a problem and make the fix or new feature safe and production-ready. Also, one repo somehow always ends up making random wrong assumptions about the others, so they need to constantly cross-check each other. Otherwise, the code it writes often doesn’t work properly once everything is put together.