We purchase tokens from Anthropic, defined by them as: “the smallest individual units of a language model, and can correspond to words, subwords, characters, or even bytes (in the case of Unicode).” When users interact with Bolt, tokens are consumed in three primary ways: chat messages between the user and the LLM, the LLM writing code, and the LLM reading the existing code to capture any changes made by the user.

Our goal is for Bolt to use as few tokens as possible to accomplish each task. As such, the team is hard at work continuing to ship product changes that increase token efficiency.

Below are a number of tips you can currently implement to maximize token efficiency:

  • Avoid Repeated Automated Error “Fix” Attempts

    Continuously clicking the automatic “fix” button can lead to unnecessary token consumption. After each attempt, review the result and refine your next request if needed. There are programming challenges that the AI cannot solve automatically, so it is a good idea to do some research and intervene manually if it fails to fix automatically.

  • Add Error Handling To Your Project

    If you find yourself stuck in an error loop, a useful strategy is to prompt the AI to enhance error handling and implement detailed logging throughout the problematic area. The AI excels at inserting robust error logs, even at a granular level, such as between functions or key steps. These logs provide valuable feedback that the AI can use to better understand the root cause of the issue. The additional logging provides more precise information when the error occurs again. With this detailed feedback, the AI can make more accurate adjustments to fix the issue.

  • Leverage the Rollback Functionality

    Use the rollback feature to revert your project to a previous state without consuming tokens. This is essentially an undo button that can take you back to any prior state of your project. This can save time and tokens if something goes wrong with your project. Keep in mind that there is no “redo” function though, so be sure you want to revert before using this feature because it is final: all changes made after the rollback point will be permanently removed.

  • Crawl, Walk, Run

    Make sure the basics of your app are scaffolded before describing the details of more advanced functionality for your site.

  • Use Specific and Focused Prompts

    When prompting the AI, be clear and specific. See here for more information on prompting most effectively. Direct the model to focus on certain files or functions rather than the entire codebase, which can improve token usage efficiency. This approach is not a magic fix, but anecdotally we’ve seen evidence that it helps.

  • Reduce the Size of your project

    As your project grows, more tokens are required to keep the AI in sync with your code. Larger projects (and longer chat conversations) demand more resources for the AI to stay aware of the context, so it’s important to be mindful of how project size impacts token usage.

    This could be accomplished by breaking a large app into smaller chunks, and glueing it all back together outside of Bolt later. For example, separate backend and frontend into separate projects is a common developer pattern. This could be challenging for less experienced developers.

  • ADVANCED USERS ONLY: .bolt/ignore

    In every bolt project, if you open it in StackBlitz you can edit a file called .bolt/ignore, and in this file you can list out any folders or folders that should be excluded from the AI context window. For example, here is our vite react starter’s ignore files: https://stackblitz.com/edit/vite-shadcn?file=.bolt%2Fignore. Any files listed there will be completely invisible to the AI, and will clear up space in the context window. You’ll need to edit the .bolt/ignore file in StackBlitz and then reopen the project in bolt for the changes to take effect. Please note: hiding files from the AI can have unintended consequences as it is no longer aware of your entire project. This approach is very powerful, but is only recommended for advanced users who can make informed decisions about what can safely be excluded, and understand/resolve issues that may arise from this approach.

  • Advanced Strategy: Reset the AI Context Window

    If the AI seems stuck or unresponsive to commands, resetting the AI context window can help. To do this, you will open your and fork your project in StackBlitz, followed by reopening the forked project in Bolt.

    1. With your project open in Bolt, click Open in StackBlitz at the top-right of page.
    2. In StackBlitz, click Fork at the top-left of the page. This will create a fork of your current project.
    3. Rename this project as you see fit.
    4. Return to the StackBlitz dashboard by clicking the lighting bolt icon at the top-left.
    5. Open your forked project. Then click Open in bolt.new.
    6. You should now see your forked project open in Bolt without the previous chat history.