economy-mode

economy-mode is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from github/gh-aw. It costs 22 tokens per session (1,247 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A setting that chooses lower-cost models for automatically selected tasks while preserving explicit model choices. It can apply for one session or be saved in project configuration.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when running a Squad session in cost-saving mode or when saving that preference for future sessions.
Why use it?
It helps reduce model spending without overriding choices the user or an agent has specified directly.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

About the project

GitHub Agentic Workflows is a GitHub CLI extension that lets developers define AI-assisted repository automation in Markdown and run it through GitHub Actions. It is intended for tasks requiring interpretation or reasoning, such as issue triage, pull-request review, CI investigation, documentation maintenance, and dependency analysis. The catalogue entries provide skills and agents for working with these workflows.

github/gh-aw · 5,108 stars · on GitHub · gh.io

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/github/gh-aw/economy-mode
Any agent
npx skills add github/gh-aw --skill economy-mode
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/github/gh-aw

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 economy-mode

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/github/gh-aw/economy-mode.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/github/gh-aw/economy-mode)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/github/gh-aw/economy-mode"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/github/gh-aw/economy-mode.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,247 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00022 $0.01247
Opus 5 $0.00011 $0.00624
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00249
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00125

Measured 2d ago against content hash d18d92b27bd6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

economy-mode 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.

.squad/templates/skills/economy-mode/SKILL.md · 115 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 115 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

SCOPE

✅ THIS SKILL PRODUCES:

  • A modified Layer 3 model selection table applied when economy mode is active
  • economyMode: true written to .squad/config.json when activated persistently
  • Spawn acknowledgments with 💰 indicator when economy mode is active

❌ THIS SKILL DOES NOT PRODUCE:

  • Code, tests, or documentation
  • Cost reports or billing artifacts
  • Changes to Layer 0, Layer 1, or Layer 2 resolution (user intent always wins)

Context

Economy mode shifts Layer 3 (Task-Aware Auto-Selection) to lower-cost alternatives. It does NOT override persistent config (defaultModel, agentModelOverrides) or per-agent charter preferences — those represent explicit user intent and always take priority.

Use this skill when the user wants to reduce costs across an entire session or permanently, without manually specifying models for each agent.

Activation Methods

Method How
Session phrase "use economy mode", "save costs", "go cheap", "reduce costs"
Persistent config "economyMode": true in .squad/config.json
CLI flag squad --economy

Deactivation: "turn off economy mode", "disable economy mode", or remove economyMode from config.json.

Economy Model Selection Table

When economy mode is active, Layer 3 auto-selection uses this table instead of the normal defaults:

Task Output Normal Mode Economy Mode
Writing code (implementation, refactoring, bug fixes) claude-sonnet-4.5 gpt-5-mini
Writing prompts or agent designs claude-sonnet-4.5 gpt-5-mini
Docs, planning, triage, changelogs, mechanical ops claude-haiku-4.5 gpt-5-mini
Architecture, code review, security audits claude-opus-4.6 claude-sonnet-4.5
Scribe / logger / mechanical file ops claude-haiku-4.5 gpt-5-mini

Prefer gpt-5-mini for all economy-mode tasks where cost is the priority.

AGENT WORKFLOW

On Session Start

  1. READ .squad/config.json
  2. CHECK for economyMode: true — if present, activate economy mode for the session
  3. STORE economy mode state in session context

Read the full file on GitHub · 115 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 First seen · 115 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A d18d92b27bd6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

economy-mode is a skill published in the GitHub repository github/gh-aw (5,108 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 1,247 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-09-03.