Claude background tasks sucking up tokens
The user is experiencing issues with Claude AI, where background tasks are consuming a large number of tokens and causing the user to hit their token limits quickly.
Why it matters
This issue highlights a potential bug in Claude Code that can significantly impact a user's token usage and productivity, requiring a full restart to resolve.
Key Points
- 1User is hitting token limits very quickly, much faster than usual
- 2The issue is caused by background processes that are still tracked by Claude, even though they are completed
- 3These background processes are injecting system reminders into every message, consuming 2,000-4,000 tokens per interaction
- 4The /clear command does not clear these completed background tasks, and a full restart of Claude is required to resolve the issue
Details
The user noticed that they were hitting their 5-hour and weekly token limits much faster than usual. Upon investigation, they found that the issue was not related to the size of their documentation, which was reasonable. The real culprit was the large number of background processes (over 38) that were still being tracked by Claude, even though they were completed. These background processes were injecting system reminders into every message, consuming a significant number of tokens. The user tried using the /clear command, but this did not resolve the issue as it only clears the conversation history, not the completed background task tracking. The solution is to fully restart Claude Code, as the completed tasks should be garbage collected when the session ends. This appears to be a bug in Claude Code, as completed background tasks should either be auto-removed after some time, not inject system reminders once completed, or be cleared by the /clear command.
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