Reduce Claude Code token usage without losing the context it needs

Where Claude Code burns tokens

Token cost in an agent loop is dominated by context, not by the answer. Every turn, the agent re-sends the context it is carrying — and if that context is stuffed with whole files it grepped and read earlier, you pay for those tokens again and again. On a large codebase the bill climbs fast.

• whole-file reads pull in hundreds of lines to use a handful
• re-reading the same files each turn re-bills the same tokens
• grep / glob dumps large, low-signal blocks into the window
• context bloat forces auto-compact, which then loses useful detail

A hard token budget on every retrieval

With Context Engine, the agent calls one MCP tool — codebase_context — and passes a tokenBudget. The service runs hybrid retrieval (dense + sparse + symbol graph), reranks and de-duplicates, then assembles a file-level pack that stops at the budget. It returns the relevant spans rather than whole files, and skips files the agent has already seen.

So the context window carries only what answers the current question, the same code is not paid for twice, and you control the ceiling per call. Lower the budget for cheap sweeps, raise it for hard tasks.

Why this cuts cost without cutting quality

The naive way to save tokens is to feed the agent less — but blind truncation drops the wrong things and the agent flails, costing more in retries. Context Engine saves tokens the other way: by spending the budget on the highest-signal spans first. You are not sending less context, you are sending better context. That is what keeps quality up while the token count comes down.

Works across every agent you use

The same token-budgeted context pack is available to Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Windsurf, or any MCP-compatible client — one config block each. If you run more than one agent, they all draw from the same fresh index of your codebase.