Stop bleeding context. Get more out of every session.

Five low-friction habits that compound across every coding session, every project, every day.

💡 Why this matters

Most Claude Code users blow through context budgets without realizing where it's going. PDF parsing, file-tree noise, accumulated history, full-file reads, and main-context investigation eat thousands of tokens before you've done any real work. Each tip below is a single habit. Apply all five and you'll get 3-5x more useful conversation on the same prompts.

1. Use .md, not PDF or screenshots

The pain: every PDF you upload burns about 3,000 tokens just to parse. Every screenshot burns about 1,200. That's context you'll never get back, and it stacks across every message.

The fix: open the PDF in Google Docs, then File, Download, Markdown. Drop the .md instead. For screenshots of code, paste the code as plain text. The image was overkill anyway.

The stat: 5 PDFs in one session is 15,000 tokens before message one. Same content as .md files is often under 5,000 combined.

2. Add a .claudeignore to every repo

The pain: Claude Code scans your file tree on session start. Without an ignore file, it pulls in node_modules/, .next/, dist/, vendored libraries, thousands of tokens of pure noise that have nothing to do with your work.

The fix: drop a .claudeignore file at your repo root. Same syntax as .gitignore. Tell it to skip build artifacts, dependencies, and anything auto-generated.

node_modules/
.next/
dist/
build/
*.log
.env
vendor/

The stat: a typical Next.js repo without .claudeignore burns 10-20k tokens on first scan. With one in place, often under 2k.

3. Use /compact before context runs hot

The pain: most people blow through 200k of context because they never compact. The agent starts forgetting what you discussed an hour ago, and you don't realize until output quality drops.

The fix: when you hit 60-70% context usage (Claude Code shows the bar at the bottom of the terminal), run /compact. It summarizes the conversation in-place, freeing budget without losing the through-line.

The stat: a 4-hour coding session without /compact often loses 30-40% of relevant context to history. Regular /compact keeps you at 90%+ usable budget.

4. Tell the agent to grep before reading