token-budget-advisor

# Token Budget Advisor (TBA) Intercept the response flow to offer the user a choice about response depth **before** Claude answers. ## When to Use - User wants to control how long or detailed a response is - User mentions tokens, budget, depth, or response length - User says "short version", "tldr", "brief", "al 25%", "exhaustive", etc. - Any time the user wants to choose depth/detail level upfront **Do not trigger** when: user already set a level this session (maintain it silently), or the answer is trivially one line. ## How It Works ### Step 1 — Estimate input tokens Use the repository's canonical context-budget heuristics to estimate the prompt's token count mentally. Use the same calibration guidance as [context-budget](../context-budget/SKILL.md): - prose: `words × 1.3` - code-heavy or mixed/code blocks: `chars / 4` For mixed content, use the dominant content type and keep the estimate heuristic. ### Step 2 — Estimate response size by complexity Classify the prompt, then apply the multiplier range to get the full response window: | Complexity | Multiplier range | Example prompts | |--------------|------------------|------------------------------------------------------| | Simple | 3× – 8× | "What is X?", yes/no, single fact | | Medium | 8× – 20× | "How does X work?" | | Medium-High | 10× – 25× | Code request with context ...