Claude Code Setup, an environment tuned to cost less and break less

Claude Code installs in one command, but daily use calls for settings that no documentation gathers in one place: which model for which task, when to compact the context, how to stop a command from reading a secrets file, how to tell that a setting has stopped working. Without them, usage climbs and failures go unnoticed.

• Global rules for Claude: the cheapest model that will do each task well, short sessions closed on a checkpoint, nothing irreversible without your approval.
• Measured settings: the context window size and the compaction threshold come from replaying 45 days of real sessions.
• Four hooks: compacted command output, protected secrets files, public web pages read by a remote browser rather than a full one, a warning when a rules file grows too heavy.
• Three sub-agents, one per model tier: search and read, apply a decided change, think through hard cases without touching anything.
• Four tools to measure and cut usage: a breakdown by day, model and project, the cache share, a compaction replay, and a splitter for a rules file that has grown too heavy.
• Two scripts: one installs, backing up every file it replaces first; the other checks the installation end to end.

A rules file of nearly 600 KB made every session start at about 290,000 tokens instead of 70,000. A badly configured background plugin took up to a third of total usage. A hook left unwired compacted nothing for over a month, and nothing broke. The package turns these into rules, and its check script actually runs every hook with a test input to catch such silent failures. The lessons ship with it: you know why each setting is there, and what you can change.

• No secrets: no keys, no tokens, no credentials. The MCP server examples carry placeholders to fill in.
• No skills by other authors: they are downloaded from their original repository, with their licence.
• No machine-specific paths: the installer puts in your own folder.

For a developer or a small team using Claude Code on Windows 10 or 11 who wants a tuned environment from day one; on macOS or Linux, each file is installed by hand. Installation takes about twenty minutes. The package is available on request: write to me and I will reply with the terms.