93% rate limit consumed in ~3 minutes on fresh session (Max plan, v2.1.85)

Environment

• Plan: Claude Max
• Model: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context)
• Claude Code version: 2.1.85 (VS Code extension, win32-x64)
• OS: Windows 11 Home 10.0.26200
• Interface: VS Code extension (not terminal CLI)

What happened

Opened a fresh Claude Code session in VS Code. Within approximately 3 minutes and ~10 light exchanges, the 5-hour session rate limit hit 93%. Weekly usage jumped from ~2% to 9% (weekly had just reset the night before).

What the session actually contained

1. A few short conversational messages
2. Several ToolSearch calls (searching for MCP tool schemas — most returned empty)
3. One Read of a ~130-line Python file
4. One Bash execution of that Python script
5. One Grep + one Bash to find a regex pattern in a JS file
6. One small Edit to update the Python file
7. Two small Agent spawns (research-only, no code generation — one Explore agent, one claude-code-guide agent)

This is normal light usage that typically runs for hours without approaching rate limits.

Context window at time of issue

/context output showed:

• Tokens used: 55.4k / 1M (6%)
• Messages: 19.8k tokens
• Free space: 919.5k (92%)

So the context window was nearly empty. This was not a long-running session that accumulated cost over time.

Verification

• Only one claude.exe process running (confirmed via tasklist)
• No background agents or rogue processes
• No prior session on this machine — previous session was on a different PC, ended 4+ hours earlier, and that machine was powered off
• The session was resumed after a VS Code restart (extension update from prior version to 2.1.85), but the full conversation history from the fresh start is visible — nothing hidden or carried over

Expected behavior

This level of usage on a Max plan with Opus 4.6 should consume a small fraction of the 5-hour rate limit, not 93%.

Possible factors

• This occurred immediately after updating to v2.1.85
• The session used --resume after a VS Code restart (for a spellcheck patch), but the entire conversation from the initial "hey" is visible in context
• A large number of MCP servers are loaded (deferred tools totaling ~76k tokens of schema), though these are deferred and shouldn't be billed as output