2026-07-13 / Signal #2
Claude Code sends ~33k tokens *before reading your prompt* (vs. OpenCode ~7k); massive cache rewrites mid-session.
“Claude spends a novel's worth of tokens telling itself instructions before it even looks at what you asked.”
8.5Weirdness
Why It Matters
Coding agents develop self-bloating scaffolding (repeated system reminders, unstable prefixes) that inflates costs and context before your instructions even land - a weird emergent behavior in real production workflows. Builder utility + model economics strangeness.
Evidence
Systima.ai blog with proxy/API measurements (published July 12); HN discussion; X threads citing exact figures (32.8k vs 6.9k first-turn payload, 54x cache writes).
Signal Read
Novelty: 9Receipts: 9Story voltage: 8Heat: 8
Source Trail
Daily scan: 2026-07-13