{
  "id": 17766600,
  "title": "I recorded 87 Claude Code sessions to find out where the money goes",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/02/i-recorded-87-claude-code-sessions-to-find-out-where-the-money-goes",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-11-02T08:06:39.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/hasangilani/i-recorded-87-claude-code-sessions-to-find-out-where-the-money-goes-2i2k"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A reporter spent the past few weeks recording Claude Code sessions to uncover the costs of AI coding agents on real codebases. The reporter ran 87 sessions on two open-source repositories, building an open-source MCP server named \"knock\" that provides the agent with a map of the codebase. The reporter found that using knock reduced costs by 40% compared to not using knock, with a median cost of $0.25 versus $0.42 for Claude Code alone. The key factors that contributed to the cost savings were reduced tool calls, faster model time, and the ability for Claude Code to skip searching and directly access the relevant code sections.",
  "summary": "I wanted to know why AI coding agents get expensive on real codebases, so I stopped guessing and started recording. Every session in this post is a real Claude Code run (Claude Sonnet 5), saved as a full transcript with the cost Claude Code reported. 87 sessions in total, on two open-source repositories. Along the way I built knock , an open-source MCP server that gives the agent a map of the…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 3,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "XDA Developers",
        "title": "I used Claude Code to build an Android app that my family actually uses every day",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/31/i-used-claude-code-to-build-an-android-app-that-my-family-actually",
        "published": "2026-10-31T14:30:20.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Tom's Hardware",
        "title": "Anthropic confirms new Claude Code limits to prevent game cloning — users report Opus 5.5 is also actively blocking reverse engineering tasks",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/02/anthropic-confirms-new-claude-code-limits-to-prevent-game-cloning",
        "published": "2026-11-02T12:30:00.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}