How to avoid hitting Claude's token limit

1. Convert files before uploading. A PDF page costs up to 3,000 tokens. I paste the text into a Google Doc, download as .md. Done. 90% cheaper. 2. Plan in Chat. Build in Cowork. Chat is cheap. Cowork is expensive. I figure out what I want in Chat first. Then I paste the plan into Cowork + Opus 4.6. 3. Type "ask me questions" instead of a long prompt. My prompt is 30 words max: "I want to [task] to [success criteria]. Read my folder. Ask me questions using AskUserQuestion before you start." 4. Edit your message. Never send a follow-up. Every "No, I meant..." gets stacked on top of the conversation. Claude re-reads all of it. The Edit button replaces the old message. Cleaner and cheaper. 5. Match the model to the task. Quick question → Chat with Haiku. Writing a report based on files → Cowork with Opus. Building a chart from data → Code with Sonnet. #claude #claudeai #claudia #ai #claudecowork