budget

name	budget
description	Estimate and rank what is consuming the context window — CLAUDE.md, MEMORY.md, USER.md, the 162 auto-loaded skill descriptions (ranked heaviest-first), and tool/MCP schemas. Use when asked about context bloat, token weight, "what's eating my context", which skills are heaviest, or with --cost for real spend.
category	meta
tags	["context-window","tokens","budget","bloat","skill-descriptions","cost"]
maturity	beta
external_deps	[]

Budget

With ~162 skill descriptions auto-loaded every session, description sprawl is a plausible silent tax on the context window — and until now we had zero visibility into it. This skill estimates and ranks the static, auto-loaded pieces of context so bloat is visible and prunable.

Run it

python3 "$CLAUDE_SKILLS_DIR/budget/scripts/budget.py"            # ranked breakdown
python3 "$CLAUDE_SKILLS_DIR/budget/scripts/budget.py" --top 15   # show 15 heaviest skills
python3 "$CLAUDE_SKILLS_DIR/budget/scripts/budget.py" --json     # machine-readable
python3 "$CLAUDE_SKILLS_DIR/budget/scripts/budget.py" --cost     # + real spend (model-usage/codexbar)

If $CLAUDE_SKILLS_DIR is unset, it lives at ~/.claude-agent/.claude/skills/budget/.

What it measures

Component	Source	Exactness
CLAUDE.md + .claude/rules/*.md	file contents	exact size, est. tokens
MEMORY.md	auto-memory index	exact size, est. tokens
USER.md	curated profile	exact size, est. tokens
Skill descriptions (×162)	skill-index.json	EXACT ranking
system prompt	rough constant	approximate — harness-hidden
tool + MCP schemas	rough constant	approximate — harness-hidden

Reading the output

• The skill-description ranking is the genuinely useful, exact part — we own skill-index.json, so the heaviest-N list is real and directly actionable.
• The grand total is an estimate. The harness does not expose live context counts to the model, so the system-prompt and tool-schema rows are conservative constants. Treat the total as order-of-magnitude, not authoritative.
• Tokenizer caveat: uses tiktoken o200k_base (a GPT tokenizer) when available — close to Claude's tokenizer but not identical (±10-20% on absolute counts). Ranking is unaffected. Falls back to a chars/4 heuristic if tiktoken isn't installed.

What to do with it

• A heavy skill description → trim it, or feed it to the skill-curator (Tier 2 item 3) as a prune/consolidate candidate. Description weight is a property of the skill itself, so it's the right bloat lever (unlike time-unused, which only ever produces a report).
• --cost shells out to model-usage / codexbar for real per-model spend if installed.

Rules

• Always present totals as an estimate — never imply the number is exact.
• Lead with the skill ranking (the exact part) when reporting to the user.
• Read-only. This skill never edits skills or settings — it only measures.