Claude Code Burns 33K Tokens Before It Even Reads Your Prompt

The number that should make you check your API bill

Someone finally put a logging proxy between an agentic coding CLI and the model endpoint instead of trusting the usage meter. The result, published this week and sitting at 500+ points on Hacker News: Claude Code sends ~32,800 tokens before your prompt is read. OpenCode sends ~6,900.

Same task. Same "22 character" prompt. A 4.7x gap that has nothing to do with what you typed.

This isn't a vibes complaint about "Claude feels expensive lately." It's a wire capture — actual JSON payloads, actual usage blocks, measured against a hash-verified test suite where both harnesses got the right answer. If you're running agentic coding tools in a loop all day, this is your context budget, and someone is spending it before you get a turn.

Where the 33K actually goes

The breakdown, from the , methodology via logging proxy between harness and model endpoint, cross-referenced against the Hacker News discussion (500+ points, 300+ comments as of publication).