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anthropics_skills/skills/claude-api/shared/token-counting.md
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Lance Martin b29e7cf65e Update claude-api skill: Claude Opus 5 (#1476)
* Update claude-api skill: Claude Opus 5

- Add Claude Opus 5 (`claude-opus-5`) as the default model across all
  SDK examples, model tables, pricing, and migration guidance.
- Add an Opus 5 migration section covering the API changes that come
  with it, and move Opus 4.8 into the previous-generation slot.
- Drop the Opus 4.7 fast-mode guidance, which no longer applies.
- Scope the server-side fallbacks beta header to the current version.

* Update claude-api skill: Opus 5 fast-follow corrections

- Server-side refusal fallbacks are available on Claude Platform on AWS,
  not just the Claude API. Correct the availability statements in
  SKILL.md, the migration guide, and the platform-availability table.
- Simplify the effort guidance: start at `high` (the API default) and
  sweep down, rather than starting at `xhigh` for coding work.
- Add a time-to-first-token section with the prompt instruction that
  reduces pre-answer thinking on latency-sensitive routes.
- Replace the two separate thinking-disabled mitigations with the single
  combined instruction that covers both failure modes.
2026-07-24 16:12:34 -04:00

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Token Counting

Use the count_tokens endpoint (POST /v1/messages/count_tokens) for accurate token counts against Claude models. Token counts are model-specific — pass the same model ID you'll use for inference.

Do not use tiktoken. It's OpenAI's tokenizer. It undercounts Claude tokens by ~1520% on typical text, and by much more on code or non-English input. Any estimate from tiktoken, gpt-tokenizer, or similar is wrong for Claude.

Count a file or string

from anthropic import Anthropic

client = Anthropic()
resp = client.messages.count_tokens(
    model="claude-opus-5",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": open("CLAUDE.md").read()}],
)
print(resp.input_tokens)

TypeScript: await client.messages.countTokens({model, messages}).input_tokens. See {lang}/claude-api/README.md for other SDKs.

CLI

ant messages count-tokens --model claude-opus-5 \
  --message '{role: user, content: "@./CLAUDE.md"}' \
  --transform input_tokens -r

Diffing a file across two versions

The endpoint is stateless — count each version separately and subtract:

from anthropic import Anthropic
import subprocess

client = Anthropic()
def count(text: str) -> int:
    return client.messages.count_tokens(
        model="claude-opus-5",
        messages=[{"role": "user", "content": text}],
    ).input_tokens

before = subprocess.check_output(["git", "show", "HEAD:CLAUDE.md"], text=True)
after = open("CLAUDE.md").read()
print(count(after) - count(before))

Full docs: see the Token Counting entry in shared/live-sources.md.