HoA #75: Token Economics

You are paying $20 a month for Claude Pro. Some days it feels like enough. On other days, you hit the usage cap before lunch and have no idea what happened.

The problem is not your plan. The problem is that nobody explained what you are actually paying for.

Every message you send to Claude costs tokens. A short question costs a few hundred. A session where you paste in a 40-page document, ask follow-up questions, and let the conversation run for an hour can cost tens of thousands. The difference between a $20 month and a $100 month is not how much you use AI. It is how you use it.

You will leave this session knowing:

• What tokens are, how Claude counts them, and why your plan has a cap
• The three biggest cost leaks: bloated CLAUDE.md files, repasted context, and using Opus when Sonnet would do
• Four principles for keeping your token budget under control without downgrading your results
• When upgrading your plan is the right call, and when it is a symptom of a workflow problem.

This Meetup is part of the launch week for my new Claude Cowork online course. The course is available at a launch-week discount.