Comment by Someone1234
3 days ago
Part of why you're hitting your limit is that Claude's Pro subscription is completely unusable with the current usage limits. I legitimately mean it when I say, you should cancel.
But to the actual question: A lot of people's gut instinct on how to solve this doesn't work. They start going down the road of "well, if I teach the AI about my legacy codebase, it will be smarter, and therefore more efficient." But all you wind up doing is consuming all of your available context, with irrelevancies, and your agent gets dumber and costs more.
What you actually need to do is tackle it the same way a human would: Break it down into smaller problems, where the agent is able to keep the "entire problem" within context at once. Meaning 256K or less (file lengths + prompt + outputs). Then of course use a scratchpad file that holds notes, file references, constraints, and line numbers. That's your compaction protection. Restart the chat with the same scratchpad when you move between minor areas.
Context is your primary-limited resource. Fill it only with what should absolutely need to be there, and nothing else at all.
Are you managing your scrathpad file or letting the AI do it? Or both?
I have the agent automatically manage its own scratchpad file. But it is meant to be fully disposable; it isn't committed, and is destroyed if you shift areas.