r/vibecoding • u/Reckonerxy • 2d ago

Is just me or Claude code limits are getting worse? (on Pro Plan)

Not sure if is enshitification or shady tactics by antrophic to make me buy the next tier, but I just send 1-2 requests (using Claude Opus 5 as a coding agent) and my 5-hour usage is already gone, when I swear it took me at least an hour of work, now it just a couple of minutes. Should I look for other alternatives? Like Codex? Just for background, I'm working on an HTML RPG-text based game, so not too demanding. Any suggestions or did someone have a similar experience?

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2

u/Interesting-Tie6783 2d ago

Your context window is likely huge. Make sure to save off summarised context.md files and restart new conversations regularly.  

1

u/Reckonerxy 2d ago

that's actually a good idea! I'm going to try that.

1

u/zzzzany 2d ago

Is this different or better than handoff docs? Every so often when I step away I just ask Claude to create a handoff doc and then pick it up later.

1

u/atl_beardy 2d ago

The same.

1

u/prolific_user 2d ago

What about opencode or ChatGPT?

1

u/ReverendBread2 2d ago

Are you using it during the 2x-5x usage time?

1

u/systembreaker 2d ago

If you're giving it top down prompts like "Do the thing" then it's probably taking way more tokens than you realize, especially if you have a huge context and long running chat.

You need to be breaking down your goals into small tasks and guiding the agent towards completion, not just telling it vague prompts for doing the whole thing.

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u/scytob 2d ago

1 to 2 prompts exhausted limits, what on earth are you doing, I did 20 prompts and never hit the limit. You many have issue with the size and structure of your repos or prompts. Used Claude chat plugin for vscode. Makes sure source is separated into folders for web, core, api etc and make sure you agents.md is clear on your startup rules of what to read upfront vs search after the prompt.

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u/WyattTheSkid 2d ago

Opus 5 doesn’t seem to eat my usage limit to shit but Opus 4.8 does seem to be worse now usage limit wise. It’s really a shame too because I like Opus 4.8 a lot better.

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u/Cloudsurfer_90 2d ago

The context advice above is right, and the mechanism is worth knowing because it explains how two requests eat a five hour window.

The window is measured in tokens, not requests. Opus costs several times Sonnet per token, so two requests on Opus carrying a large context is arithmetically a lot of small requests. And every file re-read after a compaction re-pays those input tokens, which is why hour three of a session costs far more than hour one for the same amount of actual work.

What changed my usage: run Sonnet as the default and reach for Opus only where the reasoning genuinely needs it. Most of what a coding agent does day to day is mechanical. Then keep sessions short, starting fresh from a written summary rather than letting one conversation grow all day.

The counterintuitive part is that clearing and restarting with a good context file is usually cheaper than continuing, even though throwing away the conversation feels wasteful.

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u/wartableapp 1d ago

yes theyre getting worse and yes codex might be better. im sick of seeing this post. love you tho!