What is skill-token-budget-linter?

A static checker that measures the size of skill descriptions, instruction files, and references against token budgets. Tokens are the small text units used to measure how much context an AI model reads.

Use it to lint one skill or all skills, with an optional strict mode that also fails on warning-level limits.

It helps prevent skill files from using too much standing context and making agent interactions more expensive or less focused.

skill-token-budget-linter — Skill for Claude Code by wyattowalsh

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 wyattowalsh/agents --skill skill-token-budget-linter

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/wyattowalsh/agents

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install agents, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 71 skills, 20 agents, 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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wyattowalsh/agents/skill-token-budget-linter/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/wyattowalsh/agents/skill-token-budget-linter)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/wyattowalsh/agents/skill-token-budget-linter"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wyattowalsh/agents/skill-token-budget-linter/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/wyattowalsh/agents/skill-token-budget-linter"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/wyattowalsh/agents/skill-token-budget-linter.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 37 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 344 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00037	$0.00344
Opus 5.5	$0.00015	$0.00138
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00007	$0.00069
Haiku 4.5	$0.00004	$0.00034

Measured 1mo ago against content hash 6dcf97d08932, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

skill-token-budget-linter 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 1mo ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 3 executable files (scripts/asset_toolkit/validate_hooks.py, scripts/check.py, scripts/lint_budget.py), 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/skill-token-budget-linter/SKILL.md · 49 lines

What it actually says

Skill Token Budget Linter

Measure standing-context pressure for skill assets before they ship.

Scope: Static token-budget linting only. Does not change OpenCode DCP, RTK, or harness hook policy.

Dispatch

$ARGUMENTS	Action
`<name>`	Lint one skill directory
`repo` / `--all`	Lint every `skills/*/SKILL.md`
`--strict`	Fail on warning-tier budgets, not just hard limits
Empty	Show budget table and example commands

Budget Table

Surface	Soft warn	Hard fail
`description`	200 chars	1024 chars
body (below frontmatter)	400 lines	500 lines
single reference file	300 lines	500 lines

Workflow

uv run python skills/skill-token-budget-linter/scripts/lint_budget.py <name>
uv run python skills/skill-token-budget-linter/scripts/lint_budget.py --all

Validation Contract

uv run python skills/skill-token-budget-linter/scripts/check.py

Files

What ships with it

4 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.

1mo ago First seen · 49 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A 6dcf97d08932

Subscribe to this mod's changes

skill-token-budget-linter is a skill published in the GitHub repository wyattowalsh/agents (5 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 344 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. 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.

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