Claude Code cache confusion as Anthropic tweaks defaults, but quotas still drain

Anthropic last month reduced the TTL (time to live) for the Claude Code prompt cache from one hour to five minutes for many requests, but said this should not increase costs despite users reporting faster depleting quotas.

User Sean Swanson posted a bug report showing that Anthropic introduced a one-hour cache for Claude Code context around February 1, then changed it back to a five-minute cache around March 7. "The 5m TTL is disproportionately punishing for the long-session, high-context use case that defines Claude Code usage," said Swanson.

When using AI coding assistants or agents, the context is additional data sent along with the user's prompts, such as existing code or background instructions. Context improves the accuracy of the AI but also requires more processing.

Claude prompt caching avoids re-processing previously used prompts including context and background information. The cache can have either a five-minute or one-hour TTL. Writing ...