告诉HN：我将Claude API的费用从每月70美元降到了几分钱。
第一次在运行 Chatter.Plus（我正在开发的一个工具，用于汇总来自 Discord、GitHub 和论坛的社区反馈）一天后查看使用成本时，我看到的费用是 2.30 美元。算了一下，按月算是 70 美元，按年算是 840 美元。仅仅是一个实例，感觉非常糟糕。
我之前做过粗略的计算，所以知道这可能是个 bug，但仍然感到不安。结果发现这只是部分是 bug，其余的则是我需要重新思考我构建这个工具的方式。
接下来的几天我花时间拆解它，进行调整，使用实时数据进行测试，检查结果，再次尝试。我发现我发送 API 请求的频率太高，并且没有优化我发送和接收的数据。
以下是我所做的改进，按影响程度从大到小排列（除了那个每天花费我一美元的 bug）：
- 完全放弃了 Claude Sonnet - 在相同数据上测试了两个模型，Haiku 实际上以三分之一的成本表现更好。
- 开始对所有请求进行批处理 - 每小时调用一次简直就是在烧钱。
- 在 AI 处理之前进行过滤 - “哈哈”和“谢谢”是很多在线聊天内容。我在花钱让 AI 告诉我这些不是反馈。尽管如此，我仍然会处理像“+1”和“我也是”这样的协议。
- 输出更简短 - 使用“H/M/L”代替“高/中/低”，推荐 40 个字符的标题。
- 在处理之前剔除代码片段 - 只是重复问题，导致请求膨胀。
到周末时：每天只需几分钱，质量依然如故。
我并不是在构建一个可以亏损运营多年的风险投资支持的应用。我失业了，正在尝试构建一些可能也能支付房租的东西。这个数学模型必须从第一天起就能奏效。
好处是：这些节省让我可以将定价层级限制提高三倍，并增加间歇性的质量检查。这是我原本无法获得的余地。
欢迎提问。
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The first time I pulled usage costs after running Chatter.Plus - a tool I'm building that aggregates community feedback from Discord/GitHub/forums - for a day hours, I saw $2.30. Did the math. $70/month. $840/year. For one instance. Felt sick.<p>I'd done napkin math beforehand, so I knew it was probably a bug, but still. Turns out it was only partially a bug. The rest was me needing to rethink how I built this thing.
Spent the next couple days ripping it apart. Making tweaks, testing with live data, checking results, trying again. What I found was I was sending API requests too often and not optimizing what I was sending and receiving.<p>Here's what moved the needle, roughly big to small (besides that bug that was costin me a buck a day alone):<p>- Dropped Claude Sonnet entirely - tested both models on the same data, Haiku actually performed better at a third of the cost<p>- Started batching everything - hourly calls were a money fire<p>- Filter before the AI - "lol" and "thanks" are a lot of online chatter. I was paying AI to tell me that's not feedback. That said, I still process agreements like "+1" and "me too."<p>- Shorter outputs - "H/M/L" instead of "high/medium/low", 40-char title recommendation<p>- Strip code snippets before processing - just reiterating the issue and bloating the call<p>End of the week: pennies a day. Same quality.<p>I'm not building a VC-backed app that can run at a loss for years. I'm unemployed, trying to build something that might also pay rent. The math has to work from day one.<p>The upside: these savings let me 3x my pricing tier limits and add intermittent quality checks. Headroom I wouldn't have had otherwise.<p>Happy to answer questions.