token-budget

# Token & Context Discipline <!-- routing-eval reads this line; it lives in the BODY so the always-on skill LISTING stays inside Claude Code's budget (1% of the context window) — an overflowing listing gets descriptions truncated or dropped, which strips the very keywords a match depends on. --> Trigger phrases: "token budget", "token cost", "context", "context management", "context is full", "clear context" A subagent exists for context management: it runs in its own window and returns **only its summary** to the main thread — intermediate noise (file reads, searches, logs) never enters the main context. **Warning — measured, not guessed.** Each subagent re-pays its **full context from scratch**: in a real transcript the first turn was `cache_read=0`, every token `cache_creation` — nothing is shared with the main thread's cache. A **no-op** subagent (task = "reply DONE") already cost **~10k tokens with restricted tools and ~16k with full tool access**; that floor is base system prompt + tool schemas, paid fresh every time. Of the always-on material only the **skill listing (~2.5–3k tokens) is inherited** by a subagent — the discipline (`DISCIPLINE.md`/CLAUDE.md) and the agent descriptions are **not** injected into it. So a delegation is worth it for **isolation / parallelism / a clean window**, or when the isolated work would otherwise cost the main thread **more than that ~10–16k floor** — never by default. ## Rules 1. **Output = summary.** The agent returns a...