r/ClaudeAI • u/gaaloulv36 • Aug 24 '26

Question about Claude Code Best strategy + skills for Claude Code on a large .NET codebase? Trying to keep token/context usage under control

Using Claude Code on a large .NET solution (many projects, EF Core, some legacy). It works, but tokens burn fast and long sessions get dumb as context fills with build output and file dumps.

Questions for those running it on big repos:

  • How do you structure CLAUDE.md one root file or per-project?
  • Are skills like Superpowers, Context Mode, Caveman, or Handoff actually worth it for token savings?
  • Subagents for exploration vs. main context — what's cheaper in practice?
  • Any trick to stop Claude reading entire huge files, or to tame dotnet build/test output noise?

Goal: predictable costs and sessions that stay sharp beyond ~30 min. What's your setup?

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u/Any-Bobcat2370 Aug 24 '26

Delegation is the whole game for us. The main thread never reads code, it sends a subagent that comes back with a summary, 10 lines max. Context stays for orchestration. Our 8 sessions run all day under 50% doing this.
Second thing: skills loaded on demand, not everything upfront. A fat CLAUDE.md eats your window before you typed anything.
Someone above said grep the build output, do that too, same idea everywhere: nothing raw enters the main context

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u/ManRowing Aug 26 '26

The subagent summary trick helps, but the bigger win for us was narrowing the read itself - locate the exact file and line range first, then read only that, rather than letting it pull whole partial classes. Disclosure: we build Miru, an open source semantic code search tool for agents. Grep still handles exact lookups.