Why three, and not one
Almost every "save tokens in Claude Code" post is the same trick told again. Use a cheaper model. Write shorter prompts. Clear your context. All fine, all one lever.
A Claude Code session costs you money in three separate ways, and they are independent. You can attack all three at once because the tools that do it do not overlap.
- The RATE. What you pay per token, which is a function of who you buy them from.
- The VOLUME. How many tokens come back, which is a function of how much prose the model writes around the code.
- The WASTE. Tokens you pay for twice, which is a function of a cache clock you cannot see.
This guide is one repo per lever, in the order that pays back fastest, with what each one actually claims and what it does not.
Lever one, the RATE. deepclaude
github.com/aattaran/deepclaude. 2,254 stars, MIT.
Claude Code is two things bolted together: an agent loop that plans, reads, edits and re-checks, and a model on the other end of an API call. The loop is the part that is good. The model is the part you pay for.
deepclaude separates them. It sets three environment variables for the session so Claude Code's own loop runs completely unchanged and simply talks to a different supplier.
- ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL points at the other provider
- ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN carries that provider's key
- The model tier variables map Opus, Sonnet and Haiku onto that provider's models
Nothing about your workflow changes. Same tools, same file edits, same slash commands.
The numbers from the repo's own README: DeepSeek V4 Pro is $0.87 per million output tokens against Anthropic's $15.00, and $0.44 per million input against $3.00. That is where the seventeen times figure comes from and it is about PRICE, not speed and not quality.
Do not run this on work where the model choice is the point. Run it on the volume work
Free, for your email
Get the full setup steps + the copy-paste setup prompt
The rest of this guide (8 more sections) opens right here. The setup prompt, one paste into Claude that sets it all up, comes by email only. Use your real address.
Unlocks: What deepclaude is genuinely worse at, and how to split your day · Lever two, the VOLUME. caveman · The caveat on caveman, in the repo's own words · Lever three, the WASTE. super-token-saver · The cache clock, which is the actual point of this guide · +3 more
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