TRACE Part 2: What Happens Before You Even Write a Single Line of Code

TRACE Part 2: What Happens Before You Even Write a Single Line of Code Continued from: I built a token cost tracker for Claude Code - and it changed the way I think about AI development An innocent start Imagine you open a new project, launch Claude Code, and type: “Hey, I'm just starting a new project. I want to set up a REST API using Express and TypeScript. Can you help me with that?” Harmless. A normal start. You expect a short answer, maybe a directory structure, a few commands. What you don’t see: Before Claude even says a word, the model has already consumed thousands of tokens.