Why sending "test 123" to Vishnu isn't as simple as it looks — and what that means for rate limits.
You type a tiny message. Behind the scenes, something much bigger gets assembled and sent to the AI.
Your message is tiny — just 3 tokens. Practically nothing.
Before your message reaches the AI, Clawdbot has to package everything Vishnu needs to understand who he is, what he's doing, and what you've been talking about.
Your 3-token message gets wrapped in a massive context package:
The entire package — all 22,000+ tokens — gets sent in a single API call. Anthropic sees the full payload, not just your message.
Anthropic processes everything and sends back a response of ~500–2,000 tokens.
Your "test 123" was 3 tokens. But the total request was 22,000+ tokens. That's like writing a 3-word post-it note, but delivering it inside a 60-page binder.
The AI doesn't remember anything between messages. Every single time you send a message, the entire context must be re-sent from scratch.
The AI is completely blank every time. It's like calling a brand new employee for each message — they know nothing.
SOUL.md, AGENTS.md, USER.md, etc. are like the employee's training manual. Sent every single time, so Vishnu knows who he is.
The conversation history is like reading back the entire chat from the beginning — every message you've ever sent in this session.
Imagine calling a help desk where they never remember you. Each call: "Hi, my name is..., I'm working on..., we last discussed..."
As you chat more, the conversation history grows. What starts as a 22K token request can balloon to 50K, 70K, or even more — because every previous message is included.
When several group chats fire messages at the same time, the tokens stack up fast — and can blow past rate limits in seconds.
Four simple messages — "test 123", "hello", "testing", "hi" — fired at the same time can exceed your rate limit and cause Vishnu to stop responding until the limit resets.
A few simple habits can keep Vishnu running smoothly without hitting walls.
Don't fire messages in all groups at once. Give Vishnu a few seconds between messages so they don't all hit the API simultaneously.
Higher plan tiers give you more tokens per minute. Tier 2 (160K/min) gives 4× the room compared to free (40K/min).
/reset regularlyThis clears the conversation history, shrinking the token payload back down. Great after long sessions.
We can configure Vishnu to process one message at a time instead of all at once — avoiding token spikes.
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