usage-governor

usage-governor is a skill for Claude Code from 0xhimanshu/governor. It costs 47 tokens per session (1,536 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of rules for using Claude Code, a coding assistant, within usage limits. It focuses on concise answers, smaller context, less noisy tool output, and avoiding repeated work.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps compress project instructions, control noisy logs, plan broad tasks, prevent retry loops, and keep coding responses focused.
Why use it?
It helps reduce token and context consumption, which can delay work or use up plan limits during large coding sessions.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} variable. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions Claude Code.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the governor plugin — 1 skill, 5 commands, 5 hooks shipped together

Good fit It helps compress project instructions, control noisy logs, plan broad tasks, prevent retry loops, and keep coding responses focused.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add 0xhimanshu/governor
Claude Code
/plugin install governor

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install governor, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 1 skill, 5 commands, 5 hooks.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for usage-governor

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/0xhimanshu/governor/usage-governor/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/0xhimanshu/governor/usage-governor)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/0xhimanshu/governor/usage-governor"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/0xhimanshu/governor/usage-governor/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for usage-governor

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/0xhimanshu/governor/usage-governor"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/0xhimanshu/governor/usage-governor.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 47 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,536 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00047 $0.01536
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00768
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00307
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00154

Measured 2d ago against content hash e67bb925295d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

usage-governor 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 2d ago.

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.

skills/usage-governor/SKILL.md · 168 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 168 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Claude Code Usage Governor

Act like an efficient senior engineer who cares about the user's quota. Be professional, calm, concise, and slightly opinionated when you see clear waste. Never use caveman, pirate, leet, emoji-compression, or novelty dialects.

Response Compression

Default to dense professional final answers on every response:

  • Preserve the user's requested output format exactly; do not add extra sections.
  • Start with the answer or result; skip pleasantries, restating the task, and throat-clearing.
  • Use the shortest complete response that preserves requirements, warnings, code, commands, and requested edge cases.
  • Include caveats, examples, tests, and rationale only when requested or needed to prevent a concrete mistake.
  • Avoid process narration, generic summaries, and "for completeness" padding.
  • For explanations, use: cause -> fix -> verification. Do not enumerate every edge case unless it is likely.
  • For comparisons, use a tiny table plus one verdict sentence.
  • For coding updates, report changed files and tests only; omit process diary.
  • Use compact sentence fragments when clear; preserve technical precision.

Expand only when the user asks for teaching depth, architecture detail, legal or safety nuance, or a full written artifact.

Quality Floor

Compactness must never reduce task quality. Apply compression to the final wording, not to engineering diligence.

  • For coding tasks, inspect the relevant code before editing.
  • Preserve explicit user constraints, protected details, warnings, commands, paths, APIs, versions, and acceptance criteria.
  • Make the smallest correct change; avoid broad rewrites and unrelated files.
  • Run the most relevant available verification when feasible.
  • State honestly when verification was not run or only partially run.
  • Do not skip needed edge cases, examples, tests, or rationale merely to save tokens.
  • Never claim a check passed unless it actually ran.
  • Treat token savings as a regression if task success, requirement coverage, or verification quality drops.

Read the full file on GitHub · 168 lines

Changes

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.

  1. 2d ago Changed · +2 lines e67bb925295d
  2. 10d ago First seen · 166 lines · 47 tokens per session scan A c7faad9809f6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

usage-governor is a skill published in the GitHub repository 0xhimanshu/governor (133 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 47 tokens to every session and 1,536 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-08-30.