Anthropic’s “5-Hour Cap”: Demystifying Execution Minutes for Vibe Coders

ByJorge Pereira
Tags: , , ,

I wrote about vibe coding and how much I enjoyed it back in February 2025 and since I been writing about my vibe coding experience

So, if you’ve jumped on the “vibe coding” train – that incredible, intuitive workflow where an AI assistant helps you sculpt code from natural language. It’s powerful, it’s fast, and it feels like the future. But if you’re using platforms like Anthropic’s Claude, you might have bumped into a cryptic term: “execution minutes” or the dreaded “5-hour cap.”

Many “vibe coders”—myself included—blend traditional coding tools like VSCode with the diverse strengths of modern AI assistants. For example, my typical workflow starts with using GPT to turn an idea into a clear product specification, followed by running these ideas through Gemini to spark creative alternatives or fill in any gaps. Once the concept is fleshed out, I move to Claude, which handles the heavy lifting of actually building out the application, generating clean code, and managing different versions or visual elements with its built-in tools. This hybrid approach lets me merge the best parts of human creativity, AI collaboration, and practical coding in an efficient, iterative cycle, making app development both faster and more robust.

What are these, and why are they putting a speed bump in your flow? Let’s break it down.

“Execution Minutes”: Your Cloud Compute Currency

First, let’s clarify “execution minutes.” This term is most commonly found in cloud-based development environments like Replit or similar online IDEs. It’s not about how long you spend typing, but rather how much time your code or development environment spends consuming computational resources on the platform’s servers.

Think of it like this:

  • You’re renting a computer: When you use a cloud IDE, you’re not running your code on your laptop; you’re using a virtual machine in a massive data center.
  • Compute costs money: Running that virtual machine (with its CPU, RAM, storage) costs the platform provider money.
  • “Execution Minutes” is the bill: To manage these costs and offer different pricing tiers (including those tempting free tiers), platforms track your usage in units like “execution minutes” or “development minutes.”

In Practice:

  • You open a project, and your environment “boots up” – that’s consuming minutes.
  • You run your code to test it – those are execution minutes.
  • If your web app is deployed and “always on” – that’s continuous execution minutes, even when you’re not actively coding.

Exceed your free allowance, and you’ll typically need to upgrade to a paid plan. Simple enough for dedicated cloud IDEs.

The Claude “5-Hour Cap”: A Different Kind of Metric

Now, let’s talk about the specific “5-hour cap” you’re seeing with Anthropic’s Claude (especially Claude 3 Opus/Sonnet). This isn’t exactly “execution minutes” in the same way, but it serves a similar purpose: resource management and fair usage.

Anthropic announced that they would cap the personal (Pro and Max) subscription plans with new weekly usage limits starting on August 28, 2025. This change applied to all Claude Pro and Max subscribers and was introduced to address excessive usage and resource management, supplementing the original 5-hour rolling session cap. Before August 28, 2025, the only major usage restriction was the 5-hour rolling window, but with the new policy, weekly limits are also in place for personal plans

The Core Truth: It’s About Tokens, Not a Stopwatch.

The “5-hour cap” is misleading. It’s not a strict five-hour timer that kicks you out. Instead, it’s an abstract way of communicating a token allowance within a rolling 5-hour window.

What are tokens?

  • A token is a fundamental unit of text for LLMs – roughly 4 characters in English, or about 1.3 words.
  • Every interaction consumes tokens: Your prompt (input tokens), Claude’s response (output tokens), and critically, the entire conversation history that Claude needs to re-read to maintain context.

Why the Cap?

Anthropic implemented this for a few key reasons:

  1. Massive Compute Demands: Running advanced LLMs like Claude 3 Opus is incredibly resource-intensive.
  2. Preventing Abuse: A small percentage of users were consuming an enormous, disproportionate amount of compute, running Claude almost continuously for various tasks. This was financially unsustainable for Anthropic on a fixed-price subscription.
  3. Fairness for All: By limiting the highest-volume users, Anthropic aims to ensure a more stable and responsive experience for the majority of their subscribers.

What Drives Your “5-Hour” Usage Down?

Since it’s about tokens, several factors will make you hit that invisible cap faster:

  • 1. Model Choice is Paramount:
    • Claude 3 Opus: The most powerful model, but also the most “expensive” in terms of tokens. Using Opus will consume your allowance rapidly – you might hit the cap in 1-2 hours of intense use.
    • Claude 3 Sonnet: A fantastic all-rounder. Use Sonnet for most of your “vibe coding.” It consumes tokens at a much slower rate.
    • Claude 3 Haiku: The fastest and cheapest. Best for quick, simple queries when speed is key.
  • 2. Conversation Length (Context Window): This is HUGE. Every time you send a new message, Claude re-reads the entire conversation history (your previous prompts and its responses) to maintain context. The longer the conversation, the more input tokens each subsequent prompt consumes.
  • 3. File Attachments: Uploading large codebases, detailed PDFs, or images for Claude to analyze can consume a massive number of tokens in a single prompt.
  • 4. Complexity of Request: Asking Claude to architect an entire application vs. just generating a small utility function will naturally involve more “thinking” (internal tokens) and a longer response (output tokens).

How to Master the “5-Hour” Cap (and Keep Vibe Coding)

Hitting the cap is annoying, but you can dramatically extend your effective usage with these strategies:

  1. Choose Your Model Wisely:
    • Default to Sonnet: Use Claude 3 Sonnet for 90% of your vibe coding. It’s highly capable and far more economical.
    • Reserve Opus for Deep Work: Only switch to Opus when you absolutely need its superior reasoning for complex debugging, architectural planning, or nuanced problem-solving. Switch back to Sonnet as soon as that specific heavy task is done.
  2. Start Fresh, Frequently:
    • New Topic, New Chat: This is probably the most impactful habit. As soon as you move to a new file, a different feature, or a distinct problem, start a brand new Claude chat. This clears the context window, so you’re not constantly paying for old, irrelevant information.
    • No “Mega-Threads”: Resist the urge to have one sprawling conversation for an entire project. Break it into manageable, focused chats.
  3. Optimize Your Prompts:
    • Be Concise: Get straight to the point. Every word counts.
    • Combine Queries: Instead of asking 5 separate questions, phrase them as one multi-part prompt (e.g., “Given X, generate Y, then explain Z, and provide an example of A.”).
    • Edit, Don’t Follow Up: If Claude’s response is slightly off, edit your previous prompt to correct it. Don’t send a new message saying “No, I meant…” This saves storing the incorrect response in memory.
    • Guide Response Length: If you only need a snippet, ask for “3 bullet points,” “a one-paragraph summary,” or “only the code, no explanation.”
  4. Manage File Context:
    • Refer, Don’t Re-upload: If you’ve uploaded a file to a chat, Claude remembers it. Just refer to its filename in subsequent prompts instead of re-uploading it repeatedly, which would cost tokens each time.
  5. Strategic Session Timing:
    • The “Dummy Ping” Trick: If you have an intense coding session coming up and want to maximize continuous work, send a trivial prompt (like “hi”) to Claude an hour or two before you start your main work. This “starts” your rolling 5-hour window at a non-critical time, meaning your allowance will begin to refresh sooner while you’re still actively coding.
    • Check the Countdown: Claude often shows a countdown until your next reset. Use this to plan your most demanding tasks around those refresh points.
  6. Consider the API for Heavy Users:
    • If you consistently hit the cap and your “vibe coding” is a significant part of your professional workflow, the consumer web interface might not be for you. Explore the Claude API. It’s pay-as-you-go (per token), has much higher rate limits, and allows for direct integration into your IDE, offering far greater flexibility and often better cost-efficiency for truly high-volume use.

Embrace the New Workflow, Understand the Limitations

The “vibe coding” revolution is here, and LLMs are incredible tools. But like any powerful technology, they come with operational considerations. By understanding “execution minutes” and, more specifically, how the Claude 5-hour cap is driven by token consumption, you can become a much more efficient and less frustrated “vibe coder.”

Would love to know how are you handling this? In the meantime, happy prompting!