Claude Code costs 70% less by treating text as images

developer steven chong released pxpipe, an open-source proxy that intercepts requests to claude code and compresses static context like system prompts and tool documentation into dense pngs. this method exploits anthropic's fixed pricing for image tokens versus character-based text tokens, allowing users to pack approximately 3.1 characters per token and achieve average savings of 59 to 70%. in one documented fable 5 demo, session costs dropped from $42.21 to $6.06, though the method introduces latency and risks garbling exact strings like hashes. the tool defaults to claude fable 5 due to its superior ocr accuracy compared to opus 4.7 or gpt 5.5, signaling potential pressure on ai labs to restructure vision pricing tiers if such usage becomes widespread.