Stop Wasting Money in Claude Code: 3 Simple Tips

Claude Code can get expensive fast if you ignore usage, model selection, and context. Here are 3 simple tips to cut costs and get more out of Claude Code. In this video, I walk through three practical Claude Code tips that beginners can use immediately, but even experienced users may find something useful. First, we look at visibility. If you want to control Claude Code usage, you need to know what you're consuming. I show how the Claude Code status line can provide persistent visibility into usage, context, tokens, cost, session information, and more. I also demonstrate my own statusline configuration tool that makes customizing this information much easier. Then we look at one of my favorite Claude Code features: Opus Plan. Instead of manually switching models, Opus can handle the planning and architecture while Sonnet handles execution. Finally, I explain why I intentionally keep Claude Code sessions short. Huge context windows sound great, but carrying more context through a long session can increase usage and make it harder for the model to stay focused. I’ll show you how I reset sessions and create a self-contained resume prompt when I need to continue the work. Links: My Statusline tool: https://github.com/jacob-bd/claude-code-statusline My Relay-AI tool: https://github.com/jacob-bd/relay-ai 📲 Daily AI news on Telegram → https://t.me/genaispot 📺 Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@GenAISpotlight ✅ Follow GenAI Spotlight on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@genai.spotlight #️⃣ Follow GenAI Spotlight on X: https://x.com/GenAISpotlight 👨🏽‍⚕️ Follow GenAI Spotlight on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/genai-spotlight ⏱️ Chapters 0:00 Intro And Tip 1: Cost Visibility 2:16 The Status Line Config Tool 5:52 Tip 2: Opus Plan Mode 8:43 Tip 3: Keep Sessions Short 9:45 Context Rot And The 250k Rule 📲 Daily AI news on Telegram → https://t.me/genaispot 📺 Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@GenAISpotlight ✅ Follow GenAI Spotlight on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@genai.spotlight #️⃣ Follow GenAI Spotlight on X: https://x.com/GenAISpotlight 👨🏽‍⚕️ Follow GenAI Spotlight on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/genai-spotlight #claudecode #anthropic #aicoding #finops #vibecoding