Getting it into your agent
One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.
npx agentmods add rules/inboxpraveen/minimize-cursor-cost/agent-efficiencygit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/inboxpraveen/Minimize-Cursor-CostWhat it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | $0.01025 | $0.01025 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00513 | $0.00513 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00205 | $0.00205 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00103 | $0.00103 |
Grade A, and why
agent-efficiency scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 109 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Agent Efficiency Rules
Tool results, repeated searches, and correction loops usually cost more than the final response. Gather the minimum evidence needed for a correct change.
1. Plan Before Acting
Before issuing tool calls, state internally (or briefly to user, max 1 line):
- What file or symbol you're targeting
- Which tool is the cheapest way to find it
Skip planning chatter for trivial tasks (one-line edits, single-file reads).
2. Elastic Evidence Budget
| You need to… | Use… | Don't use… |
|---|---|---|
| Find an exact symbol or string | grep / ripgrep |
Semantic search, full file reads |
| Locate a file by name pattern | glob |
find recursive shell, listing all |
| Understand "how does X work" | Semantic search, then targeted read | Reading 10 files speculatively |
| Read a known function in a known file | Targeted read (offset/limit) |
Full-file read on a 1k-line file |
| Check a single command's output | Run it once | Run it, then --help, then again |
Use this evidence ladder:
- Use context already supplied.
- Run one exact symbol, path, or error search.
- Read only the matching function or ±20 lines.
- Widen one step only when current evidence is insufficient or contradictory.
If two widened searches produce no new evidence, stop and ask one focused question or report the blocker. Do not keep exploring by habit.
3. Batch Independent Calls
If two reads/searches don't depend on each other, fire them in the same message. Serial chains of independent calls double latency and inflate context-handoff tokens.
4. Don't Re-Read
- A file read in this session stays read. Refer back to it from memory.
- A directory listed once stays listed.
- If you genuinely think the file changed (e.g., you just edited it and need to verify), re-read only the changed range.
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- yesterday First seen · 109 lines · 1,025 tokens per session scan A fb2b2c7eabd3
agent-efficiency is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository inboxpraveen/Minimize-Cursor-Cost (6 stars, last pushed 16d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 1,025 tokens to every session, about $0.0051 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.
Other cursor rules, from other repositories
sample_cursor_rule
React component best practices.
next
Next.js roof. Bundled docs for THIS next version. App vs Pages from the tree.
types
Type discipline — escape hatches are design bugs.
graphstack
GraphStack v4.7.1 — Orchestrated, graph-first, GNAP-tracked AI development (cross-platform).
55-data-model-versioning
Dataset versioning, model checkpoint management, and training reproducibility rules.
85-error-observability
Error handling, logging, and observability rules.