budget-check

budget-check is a skill for Claude Code from allemaar/open-skills. It costs 112 tokens per session (1,297 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A pre-check that decides whether it is safe to start an expensive wave of parallel coding agents. It checks the active usage block against a threshold and returns go, no-go, or unknown.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before launching a large multi-agent wave or fan-out. It can be triggered with `/budget-check` or used as a check before a large dispatch.
Why use it?
Parallel agents can consume a large amount of the available usage budget at once. This gate prevents a dispatch when usage is too close to its limit and refuses to assume approval when usage data is missing.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: mentions subagents.

Part of the open-skills plugin — 70 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it before launching a large multi-agent wave or fan-out. It can be triggered with /budget-check or used as a check before a large dispatch.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/allemaar/open-skills/budget-check
Install

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.

Any agent
npx skills add allemaar/open-skills --skill budget-check
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/allemaar/open-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install open-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 70 skills.

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 budget-check

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/allemaar/open-skills/budget-check/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/allemaar/open-skills/budget-check)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/allemaar/open-skills/budget-check"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/allemaar/open-skills/budget-check/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 budget-check

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/allemaar/open-skills/budget-check"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/allemaar/open-skills/budget-check.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 112 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,297 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00112 $0.01297
Opus 5 $0.00056 $0.00648
Sonnet 5 $0.00022 $0.00259
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00130

Measured 11d ago against content hash 36804240bb9c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

budget-check 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 11d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (references/tools/budget-check.mjs), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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/budget-check/SKILL.md · 70 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 70 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/budget-check

A pre-wave usage gate. Launching a multi-agent wave is the most expensive thing an agent does — N concurrent subagents, each burning tokens. /budget-check answers one question before you spend: is the current usage window close enough to its ceiling that starting a wave is reckless? It returns go, no-go, or unknown, and it fails closed — with no usage data it returns unknown, never a convenient "go".

It is deliberately small: a concrete wrapper around the public ccusage reader, not a judgment engine. It does not add a global rule or amend your operating directives — it is a skill you call, so the gate lives at the decision point, not as standing policy.

Structured execution spec: protocol.yon. Read it for the canonical rules and step sequence; this file is explanation. The two must stay in sync — if you edit one, update the other and refresh the @STAMP date.

The check — one tool, three verdicts

The skill ships references/tools/budget-check.mjs inside its own folder. Resolve the installed skill directory and run the bundled tool, which wraps ccusage blocks --json:

node <skill-dir>/references/tools/budget-check.mjs                  # go/no-go vs 95% of your historical-peak block
node <skill-dir>/references/tools/budget-check.mjs --threshold 90   # custom threshold (percent)
node <skill-dir>/references/tools/budget-check.mjs --token-limit 200000000   # explicit ceiling instead of the auto peak
node <skill-dir>/references/tools/budget-check.mjs --json           # machine-readable verdict
  • Ceiling = --token-limit <N> if you pass one, else the largest historical (non-active) block's total tokens — ccusage's own max notion, i.e. "your usual peak window." Without --token-limit, the gate measures against your own historical peak — a relative signal ("am I near my personal worst window"), not your real plan budget. For a true budget gate, pass --token-limit <N> with your plan's actual token ceiling.
  • Verdict = go when the active block is under the threshold, no-go at or over it, unknown when there is no usage data, no active block, or no ceiling to measure against.
  • Exit code = 0 go · 1 no-go · 2 unknown — so a dispatch script can gate on it directly.
  • On no-go it also reports secondsUntilWindowClears and a min(3600, …) poll interval, so you know how long until the window resets.

Read the full file on GitHub · 70 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 11d ago First seen · 70 lines · 112 tokens per session scan A 36804240bb9c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

budget-check is a skill published in the GitHub repository allemaar/open-skills (14 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 112 tokens to every session and 1,297 once invoked, about $0.0006 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.