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'Why Not Make a Better Harness by Default?' — 134 HN Comments Push Back on Anthropic's Token-Efficiency Advice
The 247-point HN thread on Anthropic's token guidance reframes it as a product failure rather than a tutorial, with commenters invoking the iPhone antenna 'you're holding it wrong' comparison and arguing these optimizations should be automatic. Concrete grievances include a documented 1.6M-token cache write exceeding $100 in a single session, multiple reports of cache bloating during normal workflows unrelated to user action, and the 5-hour usage limit being called absurd next to competitors resetting every two days. The most-repeated practical counter-tip: use a /handoff skill producing portable summaries roughly every 20 messages instead of running /compact on long sessions.
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