Comment by input_sh
11 hours ago
You hit a vague, never-quite-explained 5h window limit that has nothing to do with what you're doing, but with what every user is doing together. It's totally not downtime, you're just "using it too much" and they're telling you to fuck off until the overall usage slows down.
The order of priority is: everyone using the API (you don't want to calculate the price) → everyone on a $200/month plan → everyone on a $20/month plan → every free user.
Yeah it's way too vague.
This morning: (new chat) 42 seconds of thinking, 20 lines of code changed in 4 files = 5% usage
Last night: 25 minutes of thinking, 150 lines of code generated in 10 new files = 7% usage
I think the first message consumes disproportionately much percentage because it's not cached and includes the system prompt, tools, etc.
Here comes the "you're using it wrong" defence!
Let's be perfectly clear: if user actions had anything to do with hitting these limits, the limits would be prominently displayed within the tool itself, you'd be able to watch it change in real time, and you'd be able to pinpoint your usage per each conversation and per each message within that conversation.
The fact that you cannot do that is not because they can't be bothered to add such a feature, but because they want to be able to tweak those numbers on the backend while still having plausible deniability and being able to blame it on the user.
Instead, the little "usage stats" they give you is grouped by the hour and only split between input and output tokens, telling you nothing.
1 reply →
you can just watch the limit on the claude usage settings view.
itd be nice to know how much the session context window applies wrt token caching, but disabling all those skills and stopping sending a screenshot every couple messages gets that 5hour limit and weekly limit a bunch better
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