samizdisMar 31

Anthropic: Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/31/anthropic_claude_code_limits/

Anthropic admits Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

: Unexpected quota drain prompts complaints, breaks automated workflows

The Register
Show threaddinakernel

This turned out to be a bug.
https://x.com/om_patel5/status/2038754906715066444?s=20

One reddit user reverse engineered the binary and found that it was a cache invalidation issue.

They are doing some hidden string replacement if the claude code conversation talks about billing or tokens. Looks like that invalidates the cache at that point.

If that string appears anywhere in the conversation history, I think the starting text is replaced, your entire cache rebuilds from scratch.

So, nothing devious, just a bug.

Om Patel (@om_patel5) on X

THIS GUY FOUND WHY YOUR CLAUDE CODE COSTS ARE 10-20X HIGHER THAN THEY SHOULD BE he reverse engineered the entire Claude Code binary. found two hidden bugs that silently break your prompt cache. BUG 1: if your conversation mentions billing, tokens, or Claude Code internals, the

X (formerly Twitter)
Mar 31 at 1:58pmWeb
Show threadkifMar 31
Anecdotally when Claude was error 500'ing a few days ago, its retries would never succeed, but cancelling and retrying manually worked most of the time.
Show threadreplwoacauseMar 31
Nothing devious, but is Anthropic crediting users? In a sense, this is _like_ stealing from your customer, if they paid for something they never got.
Show threadmookMar 31
That is a summary and a picture of https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1s7mkn3/psa_claud... it looks like?
Show threadnovaleafMar 31

your linked bug is a cherry pick of the worst case scenario for the first request after a resume.

While it should be fixed, this isn't the same usage issue everyone is complaining about.

Show threadibejoebMar 31

> BUG 2: every time you use --resume, your entire conversation cache rebuilds from scratch. one resume on a large conversation costs $0.15 that should cost near zero.

I use it with an api key, so I can use /cost. When I did a resume, it showed the cost from what I thought was first go. I don't think it's clear what the difference is between api key and subscription, but am I believe that simply resuming cost me $5? The UI really make it look like that was the original $5.