Cost Management — Claude API Token Awareness

When to Activate

• User asks about Claude API costs or token usage
• Session shows unexpectedly high tool call volume
• Setting up a new project where cost matters
• Planning long autonomous sessions or overnight pipelines
• Choosing between Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus for a specific task or agent role
• Debugging why a particular workflow consumed more tokens than expected
• Designing a multi-agent pipeline where per-call cost adds up quickly

Why This Matters

Real-world data from Claude Code users:

• Aider users: "$35–40 in a few days" without noticing (Issue #605)
• Cline users: "$50/day without realizing" (Discussion #1727)
• One intensive session: 100–300k tokens = $0.30–$4.50 with Claude Sonnet