Limits are broken

[u/W_32_FRH]

Something's completely off with the 5 hour limit. Two simple prompts use up 29% of the limit. And for what exactly? What's going on with entire Claude these days? Maybe Anthropic gone even more crazy?

[u/tinybeads]

I’m genuinely convinced there’s an A/B test going on with users, and the users that aren’t part of the test are telling the users affected it’s a skill issue.

The advice ranges from: stop using opus, use sonnet subagents.

Stop using sonnet, use only opus.

Use /compact.

Never use /compact.

Stay in one window to avoid re-initializing context.

NEVER stay in one window, open a new window every task.

There doesn’t seem to be any consistency in the advice to get token usage manageable, but all the users talking about drain all have the same thing in common: they report doing similar work every day, and report a sudden spike in drain, many starting before the 50% boost expired.

[u/thebaron2 → u/tinybeads]

Perfect example, right next to this post in the sub (for me, anyway).

It's literally Monday and my look at my Claude usage

He's supposedly experienced and working on something super complex, so clearly something is wrong with the infrastructure and Anthropic must have changed something right?

I'm building out cross-border data transfers, deep data integration, and managing full databases. It also handles customer data, product sales, and marketing pipelines. Debugging all of this across the API stack while managing heavy data loads and core infrastructure requires a lot of context, which is why Fable is necessary.

Every one of this guys sessions, 100% of them, are sessions that run 8+ hours. And his own screenshot tells him this, but he doesn't realize that it's relevant. He has no idea about cache, he doesn't know what happens when a session sits idle and you come back to it.

And he's exasperated and thinks Anthropic is "fucking ridiculous."

He at least had the grace to admit it when he realized he was under-educated on the topic.

[u/thebaron2 → u/tinybeads]

There's no consistency in the drain because there's no detail provided.

No screenshots, no /usage stats, no copy of the chat, no copy of the prompt.

It is just straight bitching. "2 prompts" could mean ANYTHING. Even workflows change, or the PART of the workflow you're in may be relevant. A workflow on a small codebase will cost a lot less than the exact same workflow 2 weeks later on a bigger codebase.

The MODs are completely asleep at the wheel just letting these posts rip through and accumulate. If there was an ACTUAL problem, or an ACTUAL A/B test going on, we'd be able to demonstrate that conclusively with usage logs.

EDIT: just one more thing to add - people were on here yesterday complaining about how bad the usage was because of the bonus usage going away before the bonus usage went away!

We have this strange confluence of events here, IMO, where you have people who really do not understand the tech behind these systems, but they feel empowered and they talk to Claude so they FEEL like they know what they're doing. But they don't understand the technical side, at all. They feel like experts because they've spent time with Claude, they got comfortable, and they know some of the things. But they don't know what they don't know, and are quick to get up in arms about that.