Re:Reduce Claude Token Usage by 50%
by Luseniik on Friday February 27, 2026 @07:48AM
(#47179910)
This is a really sharp breakdown.
The "what's here" vs "what happened" framing is exactly right. HAM's CLAUDE.md files handle the first — conventions, stack decisions, patterns. We have a .memory/ layer (decisions.md, session logs) for the second, but your ledger approach sounds like it handles "what happened" more cleanly than what we're doing. 40k down to 3k cold-start is a serious number. Would love to hear more about your NDJSON setup if you're open to sharing.
The governance point is the one that sticks with me most. Right now HAM is permissive — the agent reads context files but nothing constrains what it can scan beyond that. Your 3-hook pipeline that scopes the context window before the agent starts is a stronger guarantee. Curious what the three hooks are and how you handle edge cases where the agent needs context outside its scoped window mid-task.
On multi-agent conflict — context files are read-only during sessions. The agent never writes to them. Conflicts happen when two developers update the same CLAUDE.md, which resolves at the git/PR layer.
Our approaches seem complementary more than competing. The ledger and directory-scoped files could work together well. Down to compare notes if you're interested.
The "what's here" vs "what happened" framing is exactly right. HAM's CLAUDE.md files handle the first — conventions, stack decisions, patterns. We have a .memory/ layer (decisions.md, session logs) for the second, but your ledger approach sounds like it handles "what happened" more cleanly than what we're doing. 40k down to 3k cold-start is a serious number. Would love to hear more about your NDJSON setup if you're open to sharing.
The governance point is the one that sticks with me most. Right now HAM is permissive — the agent reads context files but nothing constrains what it can scan beyond that. Your 3-hook pipeline that scopes the context window before the agent starts is a stronger guarantee. Curious what the three hooks are and how you handle edge cases where the agent needs context outside its scoped window mid-task.
On multi-agent conflict — context files are read-only during sessions. The agent never writes to them. Conflicts happen when two developers update the same CLAUDE.md, which resolves at the git/PR layer.
Our approaches seem complementary more than competing. The ledger and directory-scoped files could work together well. Down to compare notes if you're interested.