Claude Context Efficiency

Claude context is limited and for many devs it is an intense frustration point, since daily and weekly limits blocks your ability to work.

To minimize this, protect your context.

What consumes context unnecessarily?

At present I know of two things

• Claude's tendency to investigate package libraries like node_modules and read a lot of code to understand how modules work- rather than reading their actual documentation.
• Session compaction and resumption. This process seems to make easy subsequent session significantly shorter. Needs R&D but the direction a lot of developers are going is to explore systems where the context is stored externally, like in a database.

Minimize Context Waste on node_modules, etc

This setup can help you with the first problem- it effectively blocks Claude from scanning package directories like node_modules.

.claude/scripts/validate-bash.sh

Create this file

#!/bin/bash
COMMAND=$(cat | jq -r '.tool_input.command')
BLOCKED="node_modules|\.env|__pycache__|\.git/|dist/|build/"

if echo "$COMMAND" | grep -qE "$BLOCKED"; then
 echo "ERROR: Blocked directory pattern" >&2
 exit 2
fi

.claude/settings.local.json

And modify your Claude settings file to include these parts

{
  "permissions": {
    "allow": [
      "Bash(jq:*)"
    ],
    "deny": [],
    "ask": []
  },
  "hooks": {
    "PreToolUse": [
      {
        "matcher": "Bash",
        "hooks": [
          {
            "command": "bash .claude/scripts/validate-bash.sh"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}