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Comment by swalsh | Hacker News Reader

I have never come close to my weekly limit, but have hit my hourly limit frequently.

Same. I hit limits after 45 minutes. I'm on a measly Pro plan. I'm usually building small, open source projects, often from scratch. I only work on these projects in a 2-hour window in the morning. This is my "free time" development. I hope this change helps, because I was days away from switching back to Codex, though I like Claude Code a bit better these days.

I also hope that the fact I had OpenClaw in my sandbox once is not why I hit these limits so damn fast. I don't use it anymore and I've tried to rid my sandbox of anything "openclaw" but it is in my git history in various places on various projects. Claude doesn't seem to be transparent about this limitation.

Are you using haiku for most tasks? I'm in the Google ecosystem so I'm curious how it is on the other side.

Nope, I use Opus 4.7, mostly. Sometimes Sonnet 4.6 if I’m trying to use less tokens.

You should definitely try:

- Codex

- OpenCode Go

- Ollama Cloud

All are very useful, still a subscription, but with higher usage limits.

Specific providers like GLM also provide subscriptions like Z.ai.

Using DeepSeek, Kimi etc. through OpenRouter or from them directly is also great, here you pay per token but it's still more usage overall.

For me it's the opposite. I almost never hit hourly limit, but I hit weekly limit in about 5 days.

What does your usage look like day to day? Are you using a low level amount all day long? I'm with the others here, I've never hit the weekly limit ever, only the hourly, and I consider myself a heavy user.

I dedicate a significant amount of time to defining the precise actions that agents should perform (PRD/ADR). I break down the feature sets into Milestones and slices (tasks). These tasks are small, well-defined, and scoped. I have a prompt template that the “architect” agent prepares whenever I want to initiate a new feature. This ensures that the prompt structure remains consistent and standardized over time. The generated prompt is then pasted to the “orchestrator,” which performs context discovery (using Repoprompt) and finalizes the plan then proceeds to launch subagents to do the work.

Based on the size and complexity of the task, as well as any inter-task dependencies, the orchestrator deploys one or more subagents (sometimes 5 or 6 subagents) to work on these mini tasks. Once all tasks are completed, the orchestrator initiates verification and launches a review workflow. This workflow uses the original prompt, acceptance criteria, repository internal guidelines, and relevant skills to conduct a thorough review of the agents’ work.

Typically, there are one or two review iterations, during which the review agent identifies any issues. Sometimes, I may also notice issues and have to "steer" the orchestrator. The time required for a slice to complete ranges from 30 minutes to 4 or 5 hours, depending on its size, complexity, and the number of subtasks it contains.

Only if I run about 3 such orchestration in parallel I can reach hourly limit.

I have found that it uses a lot more tokens if I give it a very detailed todo and loop over every task 1 by 1. I now keep it to phases with detailed tasks underneath and use /loop over the phases and it uses a lot less. I also manage the context windows and tend to clear it often to keep it under around 200k (or less depending on project size)

Yeah, I do that too. Essentially, the system I described begins working on a task that is small enough and clearly defined. Each “slice” in a milestone usually have 5-10 subtasks (for instance, Slice E1 has P1...P6 subtasks). The orchestrator then receives the prompt to implement E1-P1.

It sounds like you are describing oh my open agent

I use Repoprompt's workflows for this. They are pretty good.

Would be more meaningful if everyone said what plan they are on, as there are 3 different ones that users could be discussing.

I'm on $200 Max plan

last week with claude i saturated a team premium seat at day 6 of its cycle, and a max 20x seat at day 4, plus ~$150 extra usage spend, with a 60hr work week where i am not even primarily an IC, as well as a codex 20x plan at day 3 with a personal project

Along with how many 5-hour windows they use in a day.

If you're using it 24/7 then yes, I'm sure the weekly limit is more of a concern.

If you're just using it during working hours - ie. you only use two 5-hour windows per day - then you probably, like me, struggle to hit the weekly limit even if you do max out some 5-hour windows.

Hit weekly limits all the time with Pro. Too cheap to go for Max.

That’s because the week ends before you can use them because you’re waiting for your hourly resets. Now the week essentially got longer with the same limit

I hit my weekly limit in 3 days this week. Irregularly do in 5. With the top MAX sub.

Wow, then you are most likely doing something very wrong.

No, I'm just using it a lot. It's productive enough that I've found it worthwhile tacking on subs for GLM 5.1 and Kimi as well (GLM is fantastic, Kimi is good when it works but temperamental)

same, I struggle to use more than half of my weekly, even if I max out my 5-hour windows regularly during the day.

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