Claude Code's API billing depends on how often the cache expires
Hello, HN! I’m Max, CTO at Hystax. We use Claude a lot in our development work, and we’re also trying to make coding agents cheaper to run. We built the open-source Kompressor for compressing identical tool outputs that agents constantly resend. In our Codex tests, we noticed a real cost reduction of 22.7%. But testing it with Claude Code, we found something completely different. In Claude Code, the cache plays a more crucial role than compression. Claude Code marks its messages with caching poi
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points · 2 votes
2026-11-12 16:30:29.579Z
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Source account: Hello, HN! I’m Max, CTO at Hystax. We use Claude a lot in our development work, and we’re also trying to make coding agents cheaper to run. We built the open-source Kompressor for compressing identical tool outputs that agents constantly resend. In our Codex tests, we noticed a real cost reduction of 22.7%. But testing it with Claude Code, we found something completely different. In Claude Code, the cache plays a more crucial role than compression. Claude Code marks its messages with caching poi
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Source votes: 2 votes (Nov 12, 2026 UTC; cumulative since publication) Recent records to compare: “United Airlines blocks AI agents from booking flights, citing cybersecurity risks” (TechCrunch, Nov 12, 2026); “Kazakhstan-linked hackers used AI agent to spy on Central Asian governments” (Hacker News, Nov 12, 2026). Shared themes are navigation hints; they have not been verified as the same need or independent corroboration.
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