Vibe Coding
On-Demand MCP Tool Loading: Drop Claude Code Startup Context from 54% to Near Zero
Setting ENABLE_TOOL_SEARCH to auto:0 in ~/.claude/settings.json defers MCP tool schema loading until tools are actually invoked, reducing context consumed at session start from 54% of the 200k window to near zero. Run /context to audit which tools are deferred. This is particularly impactful for users with many MCP servers configured—the baseline overhead of ~130k tokens before typing (system tools 17k + autocompact buffer 45k + memory files 4–5k) becomes manageable when MCP schemas aren't pre-loaded.
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