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💪 Whatever You're Doing with Claude, I'll Save You Millions of Claude Usage (or Your Money)

A practical Claude guide to save tokens, protect session limits, and avoid expensive context mistakes without needing to understand the full API math.

Author

Neil Phan
June 05, 2026

TL;DR

Prompt caching allows Claude Code to reuse previously processed context, reducing token usage and improving response speed during long sessions.

This guide explains how prompt caching works, what Cache Write and Cache Read mean, and what can reduce cache effectiveness. You’ll also learn several practical ways to save tokens when working on larger projects.

The article covers common causes of cache resets, how to use /clear effectively, when to create session handoffs, and how to monitor token usage with /usage and custom dashboards.

Key points

  • Important fact: Anthropic says prompt caching can reduce costs by up to 90% when the same context is reused across multiple requests.

  • Common mistake: Mixing unrelated tasks in the same session can reduce the benefits of Prompt Caching.

  • Practical takeaway: Keep sessions focused and monitor Cache Read usage to get the most value from prompt caching.

Introduction

Look at this dashboard I built.

prompt-caching
how-to-track-your-own-claude-token-usage-3

Over the past few weeks, it tracked millions of my tokens, hundreds of thousands of saved requests, and a surprisingly large amount of token usage that never had to be processed again.

At first, Prompt Caching can sound a little technical or even overwhelming. But I promise the idea is really simple.

In this guide, you'll learn how Prompt Caching works, what causes cache effectiveness to drop, and several practical habits that can help reduce token usage in Claude Code.

💸 What wastes the most Claude Code tokens in your workflow?

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I. What Is Prompt Caching?

Prompt caching is an Anthropic API feature that saves processed context so subsequent requests don't recompute it from scratch.

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