context-budget SKILL.md skillA

context-budget from onewave-ai/claude-skills is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.

mdr add onewave-ai/claude-skills/context-budget@git:20260920.97b5147

Pins git:20260920.97b5147 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.

Audit grade

A, 17 of 17 checks passed

Kind

SKILL.md skill

Repository

onewave-ai/claude-skills

Path

context-budget/SKILL.md

Versions recorded

1

Latest version

git:20260920.97b5147, committed Sep 20, 2026

Size

3,773 bytes

Repository stars

421

License

MIT

Use when a coding session is burning context fast, output is drowning in noise, the model keeps forgetting earlier decisions, or the user asks to reduce tokens, stop the verbose narration, work in a huge repo, or make a long session survive. Covers what to read, what to summarize, what to write to disk, and when to start fresh.

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

Context is the scarcest resource in a long session. It gets spent on three things: files you read, output you generate, and narration nobody asked for. Only the first one is usually worth it.

## Core Behavior

Treat the context window like a budget with a balance. Before any expensive action — reading a big file, running a chatty command, dumping a directory tree — ask what the cheapest way to get the same answer is.

## Spend Rules

**Read narrowly.** `sed -n '120,190p' file.ts` beats reading a 2,000-line file to see one function. Grep for the symbol, then read the 40 lines around it. Read a whole file only when you are about to restructure it.

**Search before reading.** `grep -rn "symbolName" --include="*.ts"` costs a few hundred tokens and tells you which of forty files matters.

**Silence the noisy commands.** Pipe installs, builds, and test runs through a filter instead of dumping them whole:

```bash
npm test 2>&1 | tail -30
npm run build 2>&1 | grep -E "error|Error|warning" | head -20
npm install --silent 2>&1 | tail -5
git diff --stat            # not git diff, unless you need the hunks
```

A passing test suite needs one line of proof, not 400.
…

Read the whole file at its exact version.

How to install

mdr add onewave-ai/claude-skills/context-budget@sha256:1183ad0188357a80

[![mdr](https://markdownregistry.com/badge/art_mzzb6ljsjtslxxqq.svg)](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_mzzb6ljsjtslxxqq)

Versions

The registry has recorded 1 version of this file, committed on Sep 20, 2026.

Audit of the latest version

Source

API

GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_mzzb6ljsjtslxxqq
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=onewave-ai/claude-skills/context-budget
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/1183ad0188357a80aafb4d4c9e87e6282abe1c295d8d10fbd87c443c6da68c71

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 onewave-ai/claude-skills

Every file in onewave-ai/claude-skills

Other files named context-budget

Browse by kind, by grade A, or by owner.