How are people using Claude to use this much API? I use it to write the occasional bit and the free one seems enough - I've only once been told to come back tomorrow.
They continue conversations in huge contexts which quickly slurps up their credits and instead of changing their workflow and adapting, they shovel more cash into it so it burns brighter.
write any project with a lot of math and memory shuffling and the structure will generally start eating lots of tokens.
write any project that has a lot of interactive 'dialogues', or exacting and detailed comments, eats a lot of tokens.
My record for tapping out the Claude Max API quickly was sprint-coding a poker solver and accompanying web front end w/ Opus. The backend had a lot of gpgpu stuff going on , and the front end was extremely verbose w/ a wordy ui/ux.
Not great by default, it just lists the files that were added or modified and "signs" itself at the bottom. I see no value in its commit messages compared to just scrolling down and seeing the actual diff.
You can make it somewhat better by adding instructions in CLAUDE.md, but I did notice those instructions getting ignored from time to time unless you "remind it".