I castrated Claude Code.
Ripped almost everything out and left only the bare minimum: read, inspect, write.
Startup context is now under 2k tokens.
I also capped the context window at 200k tokens so it compacts earlier instead of chewing through my limits with bloated context.
Basically pushed Claude Code much closer to Pi’s minimal approach.
This is all on the $20 Claude Pro plan, running Opus 5 on low effort. For me, that’s the only setup that makes sense for actual work.
Now I want to see how far I can stretch a $20 subscription like this.
I’ll report back. If you’re interested in the experiment, let me know.
