I just used Claude to write a plug-in which changed the bottom of the CLI to say:
( ) Usage: 34% (resets in 2h 47m) Context: 56% [Opus 4.6]
auto mode on (shift+tab to cycle)
That way if my usage starts shooting up, it's very easy to notice (and the color of "( )", which is a circle that I couldn't paste here, changes when it gets high, ensuring I don't miss it).
I coupled that with a hook that watches for usage spiking (basically when I've been talking too long or did something to add a ton of context, so suddenly every turn sends a ton of context back, using up a ton of usage).
Between the two I haven't hit usage caps in weeks.
Why not juat write the code. Its not that much faster to produce good code with AI. I spend nearly identical amoubts of time reviewing AI code as it would take to write. Im honestly not convinced there is all that much of a productivity boost, maybe 20% faster.
I was mostly joking, but to answer your question, the productivity boost entirely depends on your concern for code quality. Sometimes is it faster to just write the code than to try to explain in the prompt what to do. But if you don't care or don't need to understand what it is creating, you can get a ton of functionality fast.
I made an "amateur hour" error with Codex. Given Anthropic's recent reliability problems I thought I'd take a little time to try Codex with their $20/mo plan. So I downloaded it and gave it a whirl, not realizing that the default model was gpt-5.6-sol. Well after just an hour or two, I blew through my entire week's quota. Whoops! It would be cool if these harnesses could all graphically display your quota usage on the screen at all times.
Pretty cool tool! Congrats!
Not sure if I'm missing something but this tells you where your tokens went, breakdown per day/tool.
So the "why" is still a question left for the user to answer. Can be something like "Because I was missing a good CLAUDE.md file so it had to explore the whole repo before doing any work" or anything else. Just my take.
The only time I've ever managed to burn through a quota that fast (on the cheap plan) was with an open-ended request to check a codebase for any defects or deficiencies. It dispatched five Fable subagents.
for claude, it's response headers contain available usage, you can get it there. My deepseek harness plugin auto stops asking things when I am at 80% to allow inflight prompts to finish.
23 em-dashes in the span of a single README. I gotta hand it to Anthropic. They seriously managed to find a completely legal way to sell crack to crack addicts using other crack addicts as their unpaid sales force.
Of course, it's impossible to know for sure what was LLM processed or not, but some of your posts (like this one) have been getting classified that way.
I just used Claude to write a plug-in which changed the bottom of the CLI to say:
That way if my usage starts shooting up, it's very easy to notice (and the color of "( )", which is a circle that I couldn't paste here, changes when it gets high, ensuring I don't miss it).I coupled that with a hook that watches for usage spiking (basically when I've been talking too long or did something to add a ton of context, so suddenly every turn sends a ton of context back, using up a ton of usage).
Between the two I haven't hit usage caps in weeks.
I didn't know it was still possible to develop software after your ai quota runs out.
You wait until the month resets.
You’re joking but from the readme
> Is it safe to start a big refactor now, or should I wait for my window to clear?
Why not juat write the code. Its not that much faster to produce good code with AI. I spend nearly identical amoubts of time reviewing AI code as it would take to write. Im honestly not convinced there is all that much of a productivity boost, maybe 20% faster.
I was mostly joking, but to answer your question, the productivity boost entirely depends on your concern for code quality. Sometimes is it faster to just write the code than to try to explain in the prompt what to do. But if you don't care or don't need to understand what it is creating, you can get a ton of functionality fast.
Darmok and Jalad, after their quota ran out.
Shaka, when they discovered open models!
I made an "amateur hour" error with Codex. Given Anthropic's recent reliability problems I thought I'd take a little time to try Codex with their $20/mo plan. So I downloaded it and gave it a whirl, not realizing that the default model was gpt-5.6-sol. Well after just an hour or two, I blew through my entire week's quota. Whoops! It would be cool if these harnesses could all graphically display your quota usage on the screen at all times.
You can enable showing the quota usage (and much more) in codex via /statusline
In 95% of cases it is because you had a large context for which the cache expired.
The amount of people I see running around at 800k context and wondering why they are burning through tokens is always surprising.
I've been recording every statusline output for months now so I can easily get answers to questions like this whenever I wish.
Pretty cool tool! Congrats! Not sure if I'm missing something but this tells you where your tokens went, breakdown per day/tool. So the "why" is still a question left for the user to answer. Can be something like "Because I was missing a good CLAUDE.md file so it had to explore the whole repo before doing any work" or anything else. Just my take.
The only time I've ever managed to burn through a quota that fast (on the cheap plan) was with an open-ended request to check a codebase for any defects or deficiencies. It dispatched five Fable subagents.
I care more about your experience. I'd read the blog post of the story behind this.
You can't ask Claude if your quota ran out. You have to wait for the reset...
for claude, it's response headers contain available usage, you can get it there. My deepseek harness plugin auto stops asking things when I am at 80% to allow inflight prompts to finish.
23 em-dashes in the span of a single README. I gotta hand it to Anthropic. They seriously managed to find a completely legal way to sell crack to crack addicts using other crack addicts as their unpaid sales force.
I’ve been using headroom to save on token usage and it’s pretty effective.
this kind of stats feature should be shipped by default with every harness imvho
How on Earth does one use 1.1B tokens in a week?
With cache reads and writes and a couple of long running session without /clear or /compact it can get there rather fast
Can do that in a day...
[flagged]
Can you please not post AI-generated or AI-edited comments to HN? It's not allowed here - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079.
Of course, it's impossible to know for sure what was LLM processed or not, but some of your posts (like this one) have been getting classified that way.
only one of my post/reply is flagged other than this one tho?? Also yea i admit i used AI here , sorry for that