[BUG] Quality Deterioration

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

I've noticed a massive deterioration of Claude code over the past two weeks, and I use it extensively every single day. I've noticed a lot of other people online saying the exact same thing.

To give some examples of the kind of behavior that I've noticed: simple things like working on a website, a landing page, whatever it might be, that were previously very, very simple and produced great output, have become more of a scenario where I'm having to constantly re-explain myself, or stop Claude completely when it starts to work because I can see it starting to work at the complete wrong things. Generally, just the quality is not what I am used to whatsoever with using Claude code and having used Claude code for the past four months.

For the first time ever, every single day for the past two weeks, Claude Code is apologising to me for getting things wrong. Nothing has changed about the prompts that I'm given or the type of work that I'm doing. I've been doing the exact same thing for four months now, and only in the past two weeks have things started to massively deteriorate. It's at the point now where I build things with Claude Code and then have to go direct to Codex to basically fact check it.

It'll also regularly completely forget basic things that it's been programmed to do. For example, saving work, saving work to Obsidian. It just stops doing basic things that it always did. I had it programmed that when I say "save your work", it saves it to Obsidian. I've noticed it's just stopped doing things like this. I've also noticed that my tokens are expiring a lot faster. I have upgraded to the $100/month plan and then the $200/month plan, and now on the highest level plan I find that they're expiring faster than ever. Even when I was on the $20/month plan, I was able to work consistently most of the day without having to look at my rate limits for the session. Now I find that I'm looking at that every 10 minutes and having to watch the clock as I'm working because I know it's going to run out and that's even after upgrading to the hundred dollar a month and then the two hundred dollar a month plan.

What Should Happen?

My expected behavior was that the quality of work that I can do with Claude code wouldn't deteriorate. It's really as simple as that. I didn't expect that it would get worse the longer I use it and the more comfortable with Claude Code that I get. It's gone from a learning curve at the start, really getting into a flow and using it daily and getting great work done, to now having to constantly correct it, stop it in its tracks, go back to the drawing board in general. Now you have to work in Codex because I reached my limit faster than ever before and also go to Codex to fact check the work that Claude Code has done.

Error Messages/Logs

I don't have any specific error logs, but another thing that it'll do is start actually working on something and then suddenly just stop. For example, I'm looking at the screen now and it says "sautéed for 3 minutes 51 seconds," but it hasn't actually finished what it started and hasn't told me of any issues that it ran into. It just started something and then stopped.

Steps to Reproduce

The steps to reproduce are simple:

1. I open Claude code every day
2. I start to work
3. I run into issues

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

Unsure, prior to 2 weeks ago this was fine

Claude Code Version

Claude Code 2.1.90

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

_No response_