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Everyone uploading PDFs to Claude is burning 70,000 tokens before asking a single question. A 20-page document costs between 1,500 to 3,000 tokens per page. Formatting. Broken tables. Images. Junk metadata. Claude processes all of it before you even type “summarize this.” There’s a free fix. It’s called Markitdown.... show more
109,703 views • 3 months ago •via X (Twitter)
18 Comments

how many tokens did you burn calculating how many tokens I'm burning

Just set this up and the difference in response quality is actually noticeable. Why is almost nobody talking about this?

クロードにPDFをアップロードする人は、まず1つの質問もせずに70,000トークンを無駄にしています。 Markdownに変換すればトークンを70%節約できます。品質を落とすのではなく、ノイズを排除します。旧式の方法ではなく、新しい方法を試してみてください。

Is generating PDFs as token expensive as reading them in?

This is exactly why structured document preprocessing matters. Have you tried splitting by semantic chunks before upload?

"Struggling with API costs? 💸 Built a free-to-test API to shrink prompt tokens by 55%. Hope it saves someone some money today! [

Good tip. Here's the thing about these models. They should know! They should stop you and say go get this github repo or better yet just do it. You shouldn't have to know all of these shortcuts.

Please like and share

Great point.

Markitdown's a great tool, but how often do you update its library to keep pace with Claude's latest processing techniques?

How goes the tool keep formatting consistent such as data within tables etc when converting to markdown?

This is why I built the MarkItDown GUI 👇 The official CLI is great but single-file focused. I added proper native batch/multi-file conversion with drag & drop, real-time progress, and preview. Makes bulk document → Markdown actually enjoyable:

MAYBE .@AnthropicAI .@DarioAmodei IF Anthropic wants to help its customers it will simply FILTER everything to some base MD and JPG formats automatically BEFORE Claude touches it… Because “everyday users” are a mix of skill levels and half that “normal distribution” ain’t gonna understand really WT🤬 markdown means… 🤔Of course maybe this post above👆 is simply looking for “views” and Anthropic already does this.🤷♂️ This whole TOKEN and Pay-As-You-Go system is over-complicated. You NEVER saw Spock have to tell Kirk… “It appears Captain my sensor scan will have to wait until 08:30 tomorrow… we have used our allotment of Daystrom Tokens for this stardate.”

Tell Claude to send it to markitdown before reading it.

我有便宜的token你需要吗

Nice way to explain it.

Exactly. Once you get it's just token prediction, hallucinations make perfect sense. Spot on

“$40,000/month from Claude skills” — no proof, no screenshot, no client, nothing. Half the install commands don’t even work. /plugin marketplace add isn’t real Claude Code syntax. Skills are real. MCP servers are real. The $40K is a number he typed to get follows. The only thing being printed here is engagement.
