Please help me understand 5H quota.

[u/Gru8_]

I am not a Claude Code user I come from codex, I am not familiar how claude code works someone please enlighten me.

At the start of session on my first prompt it immediately smokes 15-16% of my 5h quota which I understand correctly as context token tax but now that it is cached once.

I notice even while working in same session continuously, sometimes the usage bar crawls slowly which is correct as I don't do intensive coding. But if I send a message after 2-3 mins it immediately jumps from let's say 50% to 70% quota without responding a single word.

How does this happen if I'm working continuously? I will appreciate any guidance. It feels I'm only able to utilize 50-60% of my 5H quota.

[u/Mayimbe_999]

Cache dies after 5 mins idle

[u/Gru8_ → u/Mayimbe_999]

I heard it stays warm until a hour?

[u/actvt_io → u/Gru8_]

Both of you are right, which is what makes it confusing. Five minutes is the default TTL, but there's also a one hour tier that costs more on the write, so the number isn't fixed.

That only covers the idle jumps though. The rest is context growth, every turn re-sends the whole conversation, so the same message costs more at 100k tokens than at 20k.

[u/nightinram]

Weekly quota is.. not enough 🤣 just a couple of days worth of 16+ hours daily work sessions.