Is spawning subagents actually going to save you tokens?

Because Claude Code has no memory between calls - every turn resends the whole conversation so far, and anything already sitting in context gets rebilled as a cache read, turn after turn. Across 1,037 real sessions measured for this project, 93.9% of all billed tokens turned out to be exactly this kind of recompounding cache read, not fresh input. More turns left means more chances for whatever you left in context to get recharged, which is what makes offloading pay off.

It's the measured size of a real subagent definition - Anthropic's own code-reviewer example from the Claude Code docs, run through this project's token-estimation heuristic. It's paid fresh on every single subagent call, with no idle discount, which is the whole reason a small one-shot task can lose to just doing it inline. See the full breakdown in Claude Code subagents vs Skills, by token cost.

Because the small preset (1,500 tokens) is deliberately set equal to the summary size a subagent reports back with. If the work and the summary are the same size, isolating it saves nothing on recompounding, and you still paid the fixed ~216-token spawn cost for nothing. That's the exact failure mode the subagents vs Skills guide describes: fixed overhead outweighing the offload on tasks too small to have been worth isolating.

Not for the totals this calculator prices. It compares total tokens billed either way, not wall-clock time - parallel subagents finish faster but the token math per call is the same whether they run at once or in sequence. What changes the numbers is how many subagents you spawn, what each one does, which model runs them, and how many turns are left to recharge whatever comes back.

No - it's a modeled comparison built from documented mechanics (Anthropic's subagent and skills docs) and this project's own measured constants, not a reading of your actual transcripts. Your real numbers depend on your system prompt length, how much each subagent actually explores, and your session's real turn count. The free UsageCut scan reads your real Claude Code session history for that.

Yes. The scan and every fix are free - no card, no subscription, no signup. You only give an email if you want the optimization plan and one-command undo sent to your inbox.

The scan runs entirely on your machine. It never uploads your code, never reads your API key, and never sends your prompts or conversations anywhere. Only anonymous summary counts leave, and only if you choose to share them.

It reads your local setup and session history to find waste - idle MCP servers loaded into every session, an oversized CLAUDE.md re-sent on every request, duplicate file reads, and bloated tool output - then trims it losslessly, so each session carries less context and you hit your limit far less often.

ClockedCode is the curated, conflict-free Claude Code setup from the same maker. UsageCut makes your current setup leaner; ClockedCode makes it genuinely better - a set of hand-picked tools, specialist agents, and a tuned CLAUDE.md, installed in one paste.

Developers who use Claude Code daily and want a setup that is powerful out of the box instead of spending hours researching and wiring up plugins, agents, and MCP servers themselves.

A vetted, conflict-free bundle of hand-picked tools, specialist agents, and a tuned CLAUDE.md - everything installed together in one paste, with no setup archaeology.

Yes. ClockedCode is a one-time purchase with an instant download - no subscription and no recurring fees.

Yes. It installs alongside what you already have and is fully reversible. Run UsageCut first to clean your current setup, then add ClockedCode to level it up.