You wire claude -p into a script, it works, and then the usage numbers make no sense: a one-line prompt cost as much as a whole working session. We hit this running Claude Code on a schedule — a cold claude -p in our repo root burned roughly 150,000 tokens before doing any work , because print mode loads everything an interactive session would. This post covers what -p actually loads, the --bare flag that fixes the cost problem, and the permission and output flags that matter once Cl...