r/ClaudeCodeTLDR

Experimenting I ended up in using the mods backwards. Not to change Claude Code, but to pull a feature out of it: subscription usage and context window data, pushed to a small physical display connected over USB.

It was supposed to be a half-hour experiment. It turned into something else.

The code

The mod, the ESP32 firmware, the UI: Claude wrote all of it, on its own. For the first time since I started using AI, all I did was say "I want this" and "OK".

The CAD design

This is the part that really threw me. I gave Claude the manufacturer's dimensioned drawing of the display. It drove FreeCAD and generated the enclosure and the stand in a few minutes. I 3D printed them and the display dropped in on the first try, no tolerance tweaks. Every part fits together perfectly.

My role was the client: I described what I wanted and judged the steps and the result.

I'm not saying code doesn't need reviewing anymore. This is a desk gadget, not a production system. But that's not the point.

Until recently, this same project would have meant babysitting Claude at every step: correcting, re-prompting, fixing the CAD by hand. Not anymore.

And the jump didn't happen over the last few months. It happened over the last few weeks.

Opus 5.5 is a beast.

Software, firmware, mechanical design: three different disciplines, one counterpart, zero manual intervention.

Those of us who work with these tools every day struggle to keep up with what's becoming possible. Those who don't use them yet probably have no idea how much the world has already changed.

https://preview.redd.it/xw3364fxmoth1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=77d505505e5fe396e1e88ce92f3ce839715cd2e2

Hey everyone,

I currently run 6 micro SaaS that are actually live and generating a bit over $20,000 in recurring monthly revenue.

The wildest part? I barely wrote any code myself. I used AI to generate pretty much everything — from the database structure to the frontend.

It definitely wasn’t magic from day one. I spent a lot of hours stuck on buggy code before I finally figured out a system that actually works:

- Keep the idea minimalist (a real MVP, nothing fancy)

- Guide the AI step by step instead of asking for everything at once

- Launch fast to get real users and feedback

Lately I’ve seen way too many non-technical founders quit at the first AI bug. It’s a shame because the technical barrier has basically disappeared.

AND PLEASE, STOP BUILDING ALONE IN YOUR BEDROOM

I’m starting a community.

Full transparency:

I’ll probably charge for the full program later. It makes sense with the specific workflows and copy-paste examples I’ll be sharing. But right now the main goal is just to build together. Working alone is the fastest way to give up.

If you want to join and build or market your own AI SaaS with us,

drop a comment or send me a DM and I’ll send you the link.

Auto-compact fired between 934k and 1.003M tokens every time in my session files, and left a summary of about 16k.

Claude Code logs each compaction with the token count before and after and how long it took. I mostly run it as long agent loops on one machine, so there were plenty. 241 sessions since Jul 10, 122 compactions, 52 automatic and 70 from /compact.

Opus 5 and 5.5 fired around 1.0M, close to what the docs say for models with a native 1M window ("about 967K tokens by default"). Sonnet 5 fired at about 934k every time, but those were all in July and August on older versions.

The summary was a median 15.8k tokens, somewhere between 1.2% and 2.8% of what was there before. The first request after compacting was about 85k, because the system prompt, tools and CLAUDE.md come back on top of it. My manual compacts ran at a median 397k and kept 12.4k, so the auto ones started from more than twice the context and kept only a few thousand tokens more.

Each one took a median 111 seconds, the longest about two and a half minutes. Manual /compact took about the same, median 116s.

On current models 1M is the default on every plan including Pro, so if you've never changed anything this is what you're getting. /autocompact 500k moves the trigger, and there's autoCompactWindow in settings or CLAUDE_CODE_AUTO_COMPACT_WINDOW if you want it fixed.

In my loop sessions, which run for days, auto-compact came round a median 23 hours apart.

This is one machine and mostly agent loops, not interactive chat. I only counted tokens, nothing about what the summaries left were. Subagents never compacted at all in my logs.

If you want to check yours, the records have subtype compact_boundary and a compactMetadata block with preTokens, postTokens and durationMs, in the jsonl files under ~/.claude/projects.

Since the summary comes out around 12 to 16k either way, I'd rather run /compact myself at a break in the work than have it fire at 1M in the middle of a task.

I have applied for the claude startup program with my legit startup, and after a couple of hours i get an email with this title "Welcome to the Claude Platform" but idk if that's the actual confirmation email. anyways i went to the claude dashboard to check and i found out that i have 100$ credit but my claude account is still on the free tier and i couldn't use claude code with an api key i generated from the dashboard.
Is that normal?

https://preview.redd.it/mehrhjz2o9uh1.png?width=907&format=png&auto=webp&s=9c7d4d34ce20fdb27d43205c5dfc5d95efc61902

https://preview.redd.it/43tznzt4o9uh1.png?width=1617&format=png&auto=webp&s=4b54321a9cca51ad75e988cc21d8e27e6583a374

When I first received the email and clicked on it, the option to claim the Claude code was visible, but when I checked again later that evening, that claim section was gone.