Why is my session already half full before I've typed anything?
Every connector you add takes up space, whether you use it or not.
One Claude Code user checked how much of the desk was in use at the very start of a session, before they'd typed a single message.
About 108,000 of the 200,000 tokens were already taken.
Nearly 40,000 of those were descriptions of tools the user had connected.
Tool: something the AI can use to take an action or fetch information, like searching the web, reading your calendar, or querying a database.
The model can't see a tool. It only knows a tool exists because the app puts a description of it on the desk: its name, what it does and how to use it. A few paragraphs per tool.
Ten tools, ten descriptions. Fifty tools, fifty. All read every time (see "Why your AI usage runs out so fast").
MCP (Model Context Protocol): a standard way to plug an outside service into an AI app. Think of it like a USB socket: any service with an MCP connector can be plugged into Claude, Cowork or other apps.
One MCP connector (say, for Google Drive or Jira) often brings ten or twenty tools with it.
Connectors, skills and plugins are easy to add and easy to forget about. They keep taking up space either way.
More tools also means more chances to pick the wrong one.
In "Four ways a long chat confuses AI" we saw that every model tested got worse when it was given more than one tool. In one test, a small model failed a task when it had 46 tools to choose from, and succeeded when it had 19.
Drew Breunig describes an enterprise team that was loading 600 skills at the start of every session.
The tool makers know about this, and the better setups now load things only when they're needed.
Anthropic's skills work this way: at the start, the model only sees a one-line summary of each skill. The full instructions get loaded when it decides it needs that skill.
Progressive disclosure: showing a short summary first, and the details only when they're needed. Like a restaurant menu that lists dish names, and you ask the waiter about the one you're curious about.
Turn off connectors you're not using today. You can switch them back on in a second.
In Claude Code, run /context. It shows what's taking up the desk, including tools, before you start.
Prefer a few well-chosen tools to dozens of maybes. If you install something "just in case", it's on the desk "just in case" too.