cost-guardlisted

# Cost guard Playbook for high-performance, low-cost runs. The constraint is the context window: performance degrades as it fills, and tokens cost money. Spend context deliberately. ## Rules of thumb - **Search, don't read.** Use `rg`/`grep`/`glob` to locate, then read only the relevant lines/ranges — not whole files or directories. - **Delegate exploration.** For "how does X work / where is Y" questions across many files, spawn the `scout` subagent. It reads in its own context and returns a summary, keeping the main thread lean. - **Verify with a fresh model.** For non-trivial diffs, use the `verifier` subagent instead of re-reading everything yourself. - **Clear between tasks.** Unrelated work → `/clear`. Long single problems can keep context; switching topics should not. - **Compact with intent.** When near limits, `/compact Focus on <the thing that matters>` beats a generic compaction. - **Prefer CLIs** (`gh`, cloud CLIs) over pasting large outputs or fetching pages. - **Scope investigations.** Never say "investigate X" unbounded — name the files or the question, or hand it to `scout`. ## Model choice + measurement - `forge route "<task>"` names the cheapest capable tier before you pick a model; escalate only after an external verifier fails. - Cheap model (`scout`) for search/triage/enumeration; reserve the top model for genuinely hard reasoning, not routine edits. - `forge cost` shows real per-day spend; **`forge cost --stages`** shows the measure