How I cut Claude Code's token overhead by 44% and stopped hitting usage limits mid-session.

I'm on a paid Claude Code plan. A few weeks ago, I noticed my usage limits were hitting way faster than expected. I wasn't doing anything unusual, just regular development work. But Claude kept running out of context mid-conversation, forgetting things I'd said 10 messages ago, and compacting earlier than it should. (Compaction is when Claude Code summarizes earlier messages to free up context space. When it happens too early, you lose nuance and detail from earlier in the conversation.) I went looking for answers. LinkedIn, Dev.to, Instagram, Reddit. Most articles said the same things, and honestly, half of them were copies of each other. Token reduction tips, useful skills lists, prompt tricks. I decided to stop bookmarking and start testing. Tried every method I came across, measured the results, and kept what actually worked. Here's what I found. The 50,000 Token Problem You Don't Know You Have When you install skills in Claude Code, their metadata loads into your context window on