context-budget
Plan a session's context window like the budget it is — what loads up front, what gets linked instead, what stays fetch-on-demand, and how to keep the stable prefix cache-friendly so repeated turns cost cents instead of dollars. Use when asked my agent keeps blowing its context, plan what to load into the session, why is every turn so expensive, or design the context for this workflow. Produces the load/link/fetch allocation, the cache-aware prefix layout, the per-turn cost shape, and the eviction rules for when the window fills anyway.
npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill context-budget --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Context Budget Skill A context window is a budget that gets re-spent every single turn — everything sitting in it rides every call, which is how a session that "only loaded a few files" ends up paying for them forty times. This skill plans the spend before the session: what earns a permanent seat (loaded once, up front, stable), what gets *linked* (a map or index, with the full thing fetch-on-demand), and what never enters at all. The quiet second half is cache-awareness: providers price cached prefix tokens at a fraction of fresh ones, but only if the prefix stays byte-identical — so the layout (stable things first, volatile things last) is itself a cost decision. ## What This Skill Produces - **The allocation** — every candidate piece of context sorted into load / link / fetch-on-demand / exclude, with reasons - **The prefix layout** — stable-first ordering that keeps provider caches hitting turn after turn - **The per-turn cost shape** — what a turn costs at the start, mid-session, and near the window limit (measure with [token-cost](../token-cost/SKILL.md)) - **The eviction rules** — pre-decided: what gets summarized, crushed, or dropped when the window fills, and in what ord
- What This Skill Produces
- Required Inputs
- Framework: The Budgeting Rules
- Output Format
- The Allocation
- The Prefix Layout
- Per-Turn Cost Shape
- Eviction Rules (pre-decided)
- Quality Checks
- Anti-Patterns
What does the context-budget skill do?
Plan a session's context window like the budget it is — what loads up front, what gets linked instead, what stays fetch-on-demand, and how to keep the stable prefix cache-friendly so repeated turns cost cents instead of dollars. Use when asked my agent keeps blowing its context, plan what to load into the session, why is every turn so expensive, or design the context for this workflow. Produces the load/link/fetch allocation, the cache-aware prefix layout, the per-turn cost shape, and the eviction rules for when the window fills anyway.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill context-budget --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills, a repository with 1,255 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.