Maximizing the Spirit of your Claude Code sessions

Part of the cynic in me knows I'm about to see a side-by-side with Opus 4.6 on categories where Qwen 3.8 27B aces it.

Some days I have no idea how to isolate variables, reason effectively about the overall effects of LLMs on software quality that comes back to harm everyone. Im confused whats the point of running /clear vs starting a brand new session. At least with the latter I have session history, no? Pardon my ignorance since Claude isn't my primary driver. How does this work on a task while I'm busy with something else and come back later I've doubled my cost because the cache expires too quickly?