Tool calls (particularly fetching for context) eats the context window heavily. I explicitly send MCP calls to sub agents because they are so “wordy”.
replyEveryone who has not hit this bug thinks it’s user error… It’s not. It happened to me a few days ago, and the speed at which I tore through my 5 hour usage cap was easily 10x faster than normal.
replyAlso: sub agents do not get you free usage. They just protect your main context window.
I'm on Max. This morning, just to test, before doing anything else whatsoever, I was at 0%, and I typed 'test one two three' into CC.
replyThat put me at 12%.
I have no MCPs except the built in claude-in-chrome.
This is clearly a bug.
Don't they consume less of the token quota in case the subagents are running cheaper models like Sonnet and Haiku compared to Opus?
replyCorrect—I just wouldn't want folks to mistakenly think that the context fill % corresponds 1:1 with session token use.
replyYes, sorry. I meant it more as a descriptor of how many tokens it consumes. You are still stuck burning money.
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