Ryan's right that plan usage and context window are different things, and hitting weekly limits is usually the more painful one. On your context question though: Mine on a fresh window is 46.5k, similar to yours. Biggest chunk is memory files at 23.4k (CLAUDE md, MEMORY md, voice rules). I'm on Opus 4.7 with the 1M context, so 46k of 1M is 5%. Your 43k on the standard 200k window is closer to a quarter full before you've done anything, which is where the "is 50k bad" question gets interesting. Anthropic hasn't said high context on an empty window hurts output quality, but it does mean less room for the actual work. Tool results, file reads, and long back-and-forth all eat into what's left. Memory at 14k is fine in itself. The thing to watch is whether Claude starts ignoring your rules, that's usually the signal something's getting buried and worth splitting into topic files that load on demand rather than always-on. How I handle it: CLAUDE md for project-wide rules only, detail lives in topic files indexed from a short MEMORY md and loaded when relevant. Skills load by trigger. Worth running /insights too if you haven't, generates a local HTML report on what you've been working on, friction points, and suggested CLAUDE md additions. Just ran /insights myself out of curiosity. Mine flagged something interesting — I'm using Claude Code as an "operational command center" rather than a coding tool (757 Markdown files vs 196 TypeScript), 42 messages a day, evenings heavier than mornings. Also caught patterns I hadn't noticed, like 19% of my messages happen with parallel sessions running. Worth a look if only to see what it pulls from your own history.

@Rafal Glaz Bought a Western Digital, 6TB, 3.5" in Dec 2023 for £179 along with some memory for £64.99, current price for hard drive today £355. So yeah, big increases.

@Rafal Glaz Memory is worse, the equivalent of what we got is now around £265.

@Ryan Doser I have for 3 channels because I just forget about them if I don't, but I'm very selective and as soon as a channel no longer serves a purpose I turn it off.

I have a plan of action 🤣

Welcome @Tim Naylor. Not a combination I see often, but for the kind of work I do in workplace wellbeing and mental health AI has been genuinely invaluable. Glad to have you in the mix.