Claude Warmup

claude-warmup

Manipulate Claude Code's 5-hour usage window into resetting when you actually need it.

EDIT: You can apply the same concept and achieve the exact same goal in a "native" way by using a Claude Code Web scheduled task: https://claude.ai/code/scheduled. It works flawlessly! The "Why" section below is still very useful for visualizing why would you do this at all.

Why

Claude Code gives you a token budget that resets every 5 hours. The window starts when you send your first message, floored to the clock hour.

So if you start at 8:30 AM and burn through your budget by 11, you're locked out until 1 PM. Two dead hours in the middle of your morning.

The fix is dumb and it works: fire a throwaway message before you start working. A GitHub Actions cron sends "hi" to Haiku at 6:15 AM. The window floors to 6 AM, runs until 11. By the time you've hit the limit, it resets right away. Your next message anchors a fresh window through 4 PM.

Example schedule:

            6am    7     8     9    10    11    12    1pm    2     3     4     5    6pm
             |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |

Before:                  [========== window 1 =========]
                          work ~8:30am-11am  ░░ dead ░░
                                                       [========== window 2 =========]
                                                                work ~1pm-6pm
          cron trigger
               │
               ▼
After:       [========== window 1 =========]
              ░░ idle ░░  work ~8:30am-11am
                                           [========== window 2 =========]
                                                   work ~11am-4pm
                                                                         [== win 3 ==]
                                                                         work ~4pm-6pm

As you can see, we are able to squeeze another fresh window starting at 4pm in this c