For me, iterating with Claude begins to degrade at 200k context used, by 350k it’s crossed-fingers time, by 500k it’s essentially useless. Starting a fresh context after 300k is usually the best move imho. I wonder if people are hitting a case where Claude becomes both dumb and increasingly more expensive, essentially a doom loop.

Roughly agreed. I'm a bit baffled when it seems like someone is having long conversations with multiple tasks and loads of add-ons. I generally have one or two iterations and then a new session.

I'm using another tool, not claude code, but I don't think that matters much.