context-budget

name	context-budget
description	Use when session feels sluggish, output quality degrading, or after adding many skills/agents. Analyzes context window consumption

Context Budget

When to Use

• Session performance feels sluggish or output quality is degrading
• Recently added many skills or agents
• Planning to add more components and need to know if there's room
• Context utilization approaching 80%+ for large tasks

Context Budget Rules

• Avoid last 20% of context window for large refactoring and multi-file features
• Lower-sensitivity tasks (single edits, docs, simple fixes) tolerate higher utilization
• 80% utilization is the warning threshold for complex tasks
• 90%+ = stop and compact

Optimization Strategies

1. Strategic Compact

• After completing a milestone, before starting new work
• After exploration, before execution
• Before major context shifts

2. Skill Selection

• Only load skills relevant to current task
• Don't load all skills preemptively
• Prefer specific skills over broad ones

3. Agent Context

• Provide only the context each subagent needs
• Don't pass entire session history to subagents
• Extract relevant sections, not full files

4. Reading Strategy

• Use limit and offset instead of reading entire files
• Use grep to find specific patterns before reading
• Use glob to locate files before reading

Quick Check

If responses are getting shorter, less accurate, or ignoring instructions:

1. Check how many files/messages are in context
2. Compact at a logical boundary
3. Resume with focused context