Token budget
Skill byerlikaya/claude-starter-kit/claude-starter/skills/token-budget
Context/token discipline: subagent isolation, output = summary, move-to-file, delegation threshold, lean skills. Trigger phrases: "token", "context", "context management", "context is full", "clear context"From its SKILL.md
npx -y skills add byerlikaya/claude-starter-kit --skill token-budgetAssembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.
One thing to look at
- 22 stars22 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.
SKILL.md
2.4 KB, 542 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it
Token & Context Discipline
A subagent exists for context management: it runs in its own window and returns only its summary to the main thread — intermediate noise (file reads, searches, logs) never enters the main context.
Warning — measured, not guessed. Each subagent re-pays its full context from scratch: in a real
transcript the first turn was cache_read=0, every token cache_creation — nothing is shared with the main
thread's cache. A no-op subagent (task = "reply DONE") already cost ~10k tokens with restricted tools and
~16k with full tool access; that floor is base system prompt + tool schemas, paid fresh every time. Of the
always-on material only the skill listing (~2.5–3k tokens) is inherited by a subagent — the discipline
(DISCIPLINE.md/CLAUDE.md) and the agent descriptions are not injected into it. So a delegation is worth it
for isolation / parallelism / a clean window, or when the isolated work would otherwise cost the main thread
more than that ~10–16k floor — never by default.
Rules
- Output = summary. The agent returns a short, structured summary to the main thread; it does not return raw logs / file dumps / long code.
- Move to a file. Heavy output (a plan, scan report, inventory) is written to
docs/*.md; a summary + pointer comes back. (local, in gitignore) - Delegation threshold. Noisy/heavy work (reading many files, scanning, research) → subagent. A single tool-call / small work → main thread. Concretely: if the isolated work won't save the main thread more than the ~10–16k fresh-context floor a subagent costs, keep it on the main thread — delegate for isolation, not to shave a few reads.
- Least tooling. An agent holds only the tools it needs; extras accidentally pollute the context + burn the limit.
- Lean SKILL.md. Skills load into the main context; heavy reference goes to a separate file, only when needed.
- Targeted reading. Instead of reading a whole file, pinpoint with Grep/Glob.
- Manage with /context. session-manager-csk recommends continue/handoff+clear based on the real percentage; at a phase boundary,
/clear.
What ships with it
Read from the repository
Just SKILL.md. No reference files, no scripts.