context-budget

name	context-budget
description	Context window budget management and selective capability loading for LLM token optimization.
version	1.0.0
triggers	["context-warning","session-start","manual"]

Context Budget Skill

Purpose: Manage LLM context window as a finite resource. Ensure the right agents and skills are loaded for each task while preventing context overflow.

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Overview

LLM context windows have hard token limits. Loading all 19 agents and 27 skills simultaneously consumes context that should be reserved for the actual work. This skill implements intelligent selective loading to maximize usable context for code and reasoning.

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How It Works

1. Domain Detection

At the start of each task, analyze the user request to identify which domains are involved:

User: "Add JWT authentication to the API"
→ Detected domains: security, backend, testing
→ Load: security-reviewer, backend-specialist, tdd-guide
→ Load: security-practices, api-patterns, testing-patterns

2. Selective Loading

Consult engine/loading-rules.json to determine which agents and skills to load:

• Always loaded (core): rules.md, manifest.json, workflow-state.json
• Session context: session-context.md, session-state.json
• Domain-specific: Only agents/skills matching detected domains

3. Budget Limits

Resource	Default Limit	Rationale
Agents per session	4	Each agent ~200-500 tokens of context
Skills per session	6	Each skill ~200-800 tokens of context
Maximum loaded context	~30% of window	Reserve 70% for code and reasoning

4. Overflow Prevention

When approaching context limits:

1. Warn: Alert that context is nearing capacity
2. Compact: Apply strategic-compact skill to summarize completed work
3. Unload: Release agents/skills no longer needed for current phase
4. Persist: Save important context to session-state.json before compaction

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Task-Based Loading Profiles

Task Type	Agents Loaded	Skills Loaded
Security audit	security-reviewer, architect	security-practices, architecture
Feature build	planner, architect, tdd-guide	plan-writing, testing-patterns, clean-code
Bug fix	build-error-resolver	debugging-strategies
Sprint planning	sprint-orchestrator, planner	plan-writing, brainstorming
Code review	code-reviewer, security-reviewer	clean-code, security-practices
Deployment	devops-engineer, reliability-engineer	deployment-procedures, docker-patterns

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Integration

• Triggered at session start by reading engine/loading-rules.json
• Enforced by reliability-engineer agent
• Monitored throughout session lifecycle
• Compaction delegated to strategic-compact skill