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Claude Code background agent status updates consume 15-20% of tokens

·2026.10.29 12:33

Key point

An unofficial Bun preload hook disables the undocumented agent summary feature, reducing token spend from 16.4% to 0%.

Details

  • Claude Code's background agent feature consumes 15-20% of total token spend by sending the full transcript to the model every 30 seconds to generate a 3-5 word status update.
  • The feature lacks an official disable setting and is enabled by default since version 2.1.232, with telemetry showing it accounts for 96% of Opus model usage and 19.7% of API requests.
  • A community-developed Bun preload script, no-agent-summary.js, suppresses these requests by hooking timer functions and matching specific code anchors, effectively eliminating the overhead.
  • The solution requires restarting the Claude daemon and is tested on Linux; it fails open if code anchors change and may conflict with service terms as it modifies client runtime behavior.
anthropicclaude-codetoken-optimizationdeveloper-toolscost-management
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