Hey y'all! Welcome to Mana!
I built Mana because I kept hitting the same wall.
Deep in flow state.
Finally making solid progress on a feature.
Then: "Rate limit exceeded. Try again in 5 hours."
Game over.
Here's what became painfully obvious:
So many tokens were being wasted on tasks that didn't need my base model.
Simple reads. Basic file operations. Routine checks.
All of it eating through my mana pool like I was casting Fireball on a single goblin.
So I started tinkering.
After dabbling with MCPs for a bit, I got a prototype working that convinced Claude to use my optimized tooling over its own internal tools.
And suddenly?
The rate limits stopped being a problem.
What I'm really building here
Look — there's a lot of manual time spent configuring, tweaking, and wrestling with tooling just to keep Claude Code running smoothly.
I find it annoying.
Actually, annoying is generous. It seriously sucks up time that should go toward the actual work.
Mana is the first step in a suite of tools designed to keep engineers in flow state.
No more:
- Compacting every 15-20 minutes
- Messing with model configs
- Watching your usage bar like a hawk
Just focused work on what matters most to you.
That's what I'm building.
How Mana keeps your mana pool full
Here's where it gets nerdy (in the good way).
I spend a lot of time creating use-case specific benchmarks.
These cover the most common tasks engineers ask their LLMs to handle — the stuff you do every single day.
Then I take all the popular LLM models on the market and put them through these benchmarking tests on a weekly basis.
Why weekly?
Because new models drop constantly. And I need to know — with precision — which lightweight models can handle your routine tasks without sacrificing accuracy.
The result?
You get best-in-class performance across all your tasks.
Without you having to:
- Manually switch models in your IDE
- Update configs in Claude Code to route to lightweight alternatives
- Even think about it
Mana handles the routing.
You handle the work.
I need your help
This is v0.1 - our closed beta.
I built this to solve my own problem first, and now I want it to solve yours.
Please leave feedback in the dashboard. Tell me:
- What's working
- What's not
- What use cases I'm missing
If there's a workflow that matters to you, I'll benchmark it and make sure Mana supports it properly.
Let's build this together.
— Scotty B, Founder of Mana
FAQ
What problem does Mana solve?
Mana helps developers avoid wasted token spend in AI coding workflows by routing low-complexity tool output through optimized models, so your premium model budget is used where it actually matters.
Does Mana only work with Claude Code?
Claude-heavy workflows are a strong fit today, but the core optimization approach applies to broader MCP-based and multi-tool coding stacks.
Will optimization reduce output quality?
The goal is to preserve quality while reducing waste. Mana uses benchmarked routing for routine tasks so high-leverage work can still use stronger models when needed.