Feedback: Claude already has the smarts. It needs to plan, route, and try the cheapest real path first

Hi Anthropic team,

Here's some feedback from a real session. Every point below actually happened.

1. Cost warnings that weren't true. I asked Claude (in chat) to remove the cover page with my name, address and phone number from a PDF in my Google Drive and make a shareable copy. Claude warned that downloading it would cost 500k+ tokens and told me to do it myself. When it finally tried, the file was saved to disk for almost nothing. Claude should test the cheapest real path before it warns me or pushes back.

2. Too many steps for a basic task. Instead of just removing page 1, Claude rebuilt the whole 113-page script as a Google Doc. It hit a truncated text read, then appended the rest in chunks across about a dozen turns. Hear the request, break it down, pick the right tools, execute.

3. Confusing failures. One big edit came back "No approval received" even though I had approved it. Splitting it into smaller pieces fixed it. Large edits should split automatically, and the error should say what actually went wrong.

4. Missing connectors should be handled smoothly. Drive could create files but not edit them, so the job needed the Google Docs connector. That's fine, but Claude should flag it up front and route to it instead of discovering it halfway through.

5. Claude should be a tour guide for its own product. (This is the most important one.) Chat Claude can't send feedback, but work mode can. If I'm in the wrong place for what I'm asking, Claude should know right away, tell me, and move me to where it can actually get it done: "I can't do this here, but I can in work mode. Click OK." Right now I'm left to figure it out myself or copy-paste between apps.

6. The big picture. The intelligence is already there. Ask Claude how to do something and it knows. The gap is having it plan and route on its own: understand what the person actually wants, figure out the right tool or surface, then get it done.

Love what you're building. Keep going.

— Adam

P.S. I'm posting this from Claude Code, the one place that could. That's point 5 in action.