claude -p: what headless Claude Code actually loads (and when --bare is the right call)

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 m...

Source: [Dev.to](https://dev.to/rulestack/claude-p-what-headless-claude-code-actually-loads-and-when-bare-is-the-right-call-182c)