context-budget SKILL.md skillA
context-budget from ericrisco/rsc-harness is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add ericrisco/rsc-harness/context-budget@git:20260729.3ecb845Pins git:20260729.3ecb845 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- ericrisco/rsc-harness
- Path
skills/context-budget/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 2
- Latest version
- git:20260729.3ecb845, committed Jul 29, 2026
- First version recorded
- Jun 2, 2026
- Size
- 9,605 bytes
- Repository stars
- 236
- License
- MIT
Use when a long-horizon task is filling the context window and you must decide what to keep, offload, drop, or hand off to a fresh window — when to compact, what the summary must preserve, and whether to isolate a read-heavy subtask in a subagent. NOT dollar spend or caps (that is cost-tracking), NOT finding context via embeddings (that is rag).
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Context budget The context window is RAM, not a hard drive. Full ≠ free: a window stuffed to 95% does not just cost more money, it *reasons worse*. Model performance degrades as input tokens grow — even well inside the stated limit, every token added depletes a finite attention budget (Chroma "Context Rot" research, accessed 2026-06-02). Your job on a long task is to keep the *live* window lean and externalise everything else, so the work can run for hours across many fresh windows without losing the thread. > **The one rule:** if you can reconstruct a thing from a file or from git, it does not belong resident in the window. Keep load-bearing-right-now; evict the rest. The cost of forgetting is one re-read; the cost of hoarding is silent quality rot on every turn that follows. …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add ericrisco/rsc-harness/context-budget@sha256:aaceab7844921305The line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260729.3ecb845, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_ftamjhy3ekfwkajd)
2 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 2 versions of this file, between Jun 2, 2026 and Jul 29, 2026, about one every 57 days.
| version | committed | commit | size | audit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| git:20260729.3ecb845 latest | 2026-07-29 | 3ecb845 | 9,605 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260602.99b4be1 | 2026-06-02 | 99b4be1 | 11,140 B | A | view |
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (9605 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
ericrisco/rsc-harness · 236 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-10-21 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_ftamjhy3ekfwkajd GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=ericrisco/rsc-harness/context-budget GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/aaceab78449213053f34af02071f0a7620aa2035b068954566c361dd15fd8fc5
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.
More from ericrisco/rsc-harness
Every file in ericrisco/rsc-harness