[evilduck]

>the best ideas float up to Codex/Claude imo

They only float up if people create things like RTK and other people try them though.

It's fair to sit this one out and let others figure out if it's worth it or not but tools like RTK, Headroom, caveman mode and others do reduce input and output tokens that need to be processed, and for local LLMs that can have measurable speedups. Whether or not that ultimately hurts the resulting output I don't have enough data to say, but I am happy to play with them to find out.

[chatmasta]

Also the incentives aren’t exactly aligned. Yes, Anthropic et. al want you to have efficient token usage (because you’ll use it more, and because of some competitive pressure). But it’s not their first priority especially when they make more money with more tokens.

If a tool like rtk improves token efficiency, but has some negative impact on quality, should Anthropic integrate it immediately? Where is the line? This kind of decision is arguably better left to the user.

What they should maybe do, is have a parameter similar to effort level, that allows the user to opt into native features for token minimizing. Make the tools available but leave the choice of the fidelity/savings tradeoff up to the user.