I keep hitting Claude's usage limit and getting locked out for hours during a long audit task. What can I do about it?

One member described running long multi-step audits of an Excel bill-of-materials file in Claude, hitting 100% of the usage window in about 10 minutes and then being locked out for four hours. The suggested approach was to ask Claude directly what could be done to make the process more efficient with usage, since it may suggest starting a new chat or give tips to save usage. Another member noted that long chats consume more of the usage window because the whole conversation history has to be reprocessed on every turn, so breaking work into shorter chats reduces usage. At the end of a long chat, you can ask Claude to write a summary/prompt capturing where you left off (and which documents to re-supply), then paste that into a fresh chat so it has the needed context without carrying the full prior conversation. Claude Projects was suggested as a better solution: create a project, put reusable background/instructions in the project instructions field (e.g., 'always read this first'), and drag in reference files; every new chat within that project automatically reads the instructions and files first, so you get consistent context without manually re-pasting summaries each time.