This is spot on. The amount of wasteful output tokens from Claude is crazy. The actual output you're looking for might be better, but you're definitely going to pay for it in the long run.
The other angle here is that it's very easy to waste a ton of time and tokens with cheap models. Or you can more slowly dig yourself a hole with the SOTA models. But either way, and even with 1M tokens of context - things spiral at some point. It's just a question of whether you can get off the tracks with a working widget. It's always frustrating to know that "resetting" the environment is just handing over some free tokens to [model-provider-here] to recontextualize itself. I feel like it's the ultimate Office Space hack, likely unintentional, but really helps drive home the point of how unreliable all these offerings are.
The other angle here is that it's very easy to waste a ton of time and tokens with cheap models. Or you can more slowly dig yourself a hole with the SOTA models. But either way, and even with 1M tokens of context - things spiral at some point. It's just a question of whether you can get off the tracks with a working widget. It's always frustrating to know that "resetting" the environment is just handing over some free tokens to [model-provider-here] to recontextualize itself. I feel like it's the ultimate Office Space hack, likely unintentional, but really helps drive home the point of how unreliable all these offerings are.