Max 20x (00/mo) Opus 4 weekly token budget exhausted in 3 days of normal interactive use

Description

I'm on the Max 20x plan ($200/month) and consistently hit ~70% of my weekly token allocation within 2-3 days of normal interactive use with Opus 4. This leaves me rationing tokens for the remaining 4+ days until the weekly reset.

My Use Case

• Not running Claude Code in the background 24/7
• Not using automated/agentic loops
• Interactive sessions: reading source files, editing C code, debugging, compiling
• Engineering work: writing C programs (~2000 line files), deploying builds
• Physics research: reviewing technical documents, cross-referencing data
• File management: reading/writing config files, updating documentation
• Typical session: 2-4 hours of active work

The Problem

Opus 4 consumes tokens 3-5x faster than Sonnet per interaction. For users who need Opus-level reasoning (complex debugging, novel physics derivations, cross-domain pattern recognition), being told to "just use Sonnet" defeats the purpose of paying for the highest tier.

The Max 20x plan is marketed as the power-user tier with "20x the usage of Pro." But the weekly Opus 4 cap (reported as 24-40 hours) doesn't reflect actual interactive usage patterns where:

1. Every message re-reads the full conversation history (token cost scales with conversation length)
2. Reading source files (1000-2000 lines) costs ~30-60K input tokens per read
3. Tool calls (file reads, searches, web fetches) each add to the token count
4. The model's internal chain-of-thought reasoning (invisible to the user) consumes significant output tokens

What Would Help

1. Increase the Opus 4 weekly allocation for Max 20x users — the current cap is too low for the advertised "power user" tier
2. Better token visibility — show users their token consumption per message so they can budget. Currently there's no way to see how many tokens a single interaction cost.
3. Separate input vs output token accounting — reading a large file (input) shouldn't count the same as model reasoning (output) against the weekly cap
4. Carry-over or rollover — unused tokens from one week should roll into the next, rather than resetting to zero

Environment

• Claude Code CLI on Windows 11
• Model: claude-opus-4-6
• Plan: Max 20x ($200/month)
• Usage pattern: 2-4 hour interactive sessions, ~5 days/week