Claude Token Optimizer

Claude Token Optimizer

Claude rereads everything. Every session. You pay each time.

★ 600+ npm MIT Node 20+

Mine was 11,000 tokens per session. Open 20 sessions a day and that is 220,000 tokens gone before you type a word. That is money, usage limits, and room Claude could have used for your code.

Open a terminal in your project folder and paste each line as is. Inside Claude Code, type ! first, then paste.

0. Keep a copy of your notes, just in case:

1. See what Claude rereads every session:

2. Shrink it:

Old session notes and finished task lists move into side files Claude opens only when needed. You get a line like ✓ Saved ~3414 tokens. Run step 1 again to see your new total. Says "Nothing to prune"? Use the Claude Code prompt below instead.

Rather not type commands? Paste this into Claude Code:

Claude reads in tokens. Small pieces of text. Before, every session reread all your project notes, piece by piece.

Now it gets a cheat sheet. A short file at the start. Everything else waits in files Claude opens only when it needs them.

Nothing about how you use Claude changes. Each session just starts lighter.

My project, before and after. Claude still finds the old notes when it needs them. It just stops rereading them every session.

"command not found" or an error about Node

You need Node 20 or newer. Run node -v to check, and install it from nodejs.org if the number is lower.

If it says cto: command not found, put npx -y claude-token-optimizer in front instead of cto.

Will it overwrite my files?

It rewrites CLAUDE.md and saves the old one as CLAUDE.md.bak. A second run replaces that .bak, so keep your own copy from step 0. cto init (for developers, below) can replace .claudeignore and .claude/*.md in a project with no CLAUDE.md. The exact list of files…