Not sure if this will help you but it helped me. I was using subagents and workflows for lots of long running tasks, and part of that work included running tests. If tests took longer than 5 minutes, the cache expired, and the whole thing was then being processed as uncached input.

I created a skill to better manage agents, including a way to keep the caches valid, and it has decreased my usage considerably. I now struggle to use my 100% each week and I hit claude hard. I have a reset expiring in 5 days and I'm trying to burn down the tokens (68% with 3d 8h left) quickly so I can use my reset before it expires.

Token efficiency just means understanding the way the system works. Best person to help with that... my old friend claude.

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RALaBarge 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Yesterday in my CC there was an update that added a feature to auto compact immediately prior to the cache being invalidated.

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dotancohen an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

After I stopped letting Claude run tests, my token usage went from "gone by Wednesday" to "what can I automate this Saturday so my tokens won't go to waste".

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wolfy1993 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Don't suppose you would be happy to share the skill? Or is it fairly unique to your work flow?

I think the tests problem is really having an impact for me. Hadn't considered it before so thanks for flagging.

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olavgg 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, I should see if I can create a similar skill. The tests do spend some time to complete.

Claude: Confirmed: 195M of the 212M cache tokens (92%) come from full re-writes after 5+ minute gaps, accounting for 77% of relative cost. Now I'll check the existing wrappers so the skill builds on them.

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iamflimflam1 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Some to think about with both Claude and skills.

Can you invert things. What’s deterministic and what needs “thinking”?

Can you create a script that runs things chaining together the deterministic parts with calling out to Claude for glue that needs “thinking”.

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raylad 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How do you keep the caches valid?

	▲	entrope an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Not OP, but I typically ask it to report status of whatever is running; it can run a background task that reports to it every N minutes. With Claude Code in VS Code and a Pro subscription, it seems like the one-hour cache is the default, making it an issue less often.
	▲	j45 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Ask Claude, it's pretty wild to see.

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oblio an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> my old friend claude.

Awfully new old friend.

	▲	dotancohen an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Google is the ex, Altavista is the high school sweetheart who tragically passed at a young age.

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nextaccountic an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> including a way to keep the caches valid

Maybe doing bogus small requests to prevent the cache from expiring?

I mean in the API you can set the cache expiration time right? But I guess claude code can't do this