The live meter

In Claude Code, one dim line under the prompt, updated after every reply and every minute:

CCO · ctx 142K/1M 14% · $3.10 · 5h 63% · 7d 41% · cache 47m

• ctx: how much context the last reply was answered over, of the model's

• $: what the session has cost so far, as /cost counts it.
• 5h / 7d: how much of your plan's 5-hour and weekly limits is used.
• cache: minutes until the prompt cache expires. After that, the next

It speaks up once, as a toast, when it matters: context past 70%, a limit past 80%, or a cold cache on a large context. /cco-meter hides it or shows it again. The figures come from Claude Code itself; the meter reads no files and sends nothing anywhere.

Skills that work everywhere

These need no setup and run in chat, Cowork and Claude Code alike. Claude picks them up on its own, or you can ask:

| Skill | Ask for it like this | What you get | |---|---|---| | fresh-start | "Let's continue in a new chat" | A handoff under 300 words to paste into a new conversation, with how much it saves | | doc-digest | "Summarize this so we can keep working with it" | A digest of a long document, with a section map and references, at a tenth of the size | | project-context | "I keep explaining the same thing" | Instructions and a file list for a Project, Cowork folder or CLAUDE.md, so new chats start with it | | token-check | "How many tokens is this?" | A size estimate, what it costs over a conversation, and how to cut it | | sharpen-prompt | "Improve this prompt" | The same request with goal, scope, constraints and what done looks like |

In Claude Code

Haiku subagents

| Agent | Model | Use | |---|---|---| | context-optimizer:scout | Haiku 5.5 | Read-only exploration of the project: several files, wide searches. Read, Grep and Glob only. Returns a short answer with path:line. | | context-optimizer:runner | Haiku 5.5 | Test suites, builds, linters. Returns pass/fail and the failing items only. |

A one-paragraph policy at session start (about 90 tokens, once per conversation) tells Claude when to hand work to them. Only their short answer enters the expensive model's context. /cco orchestrate runs a whole task that way.

/cco: one command for the rest

/cco alone shows the session board: budget, money spent and saved, waste, the active task and what to do next. /cco help lists everything:

| See where the tokens go | Spend less | Settings and data | |---|---|---| | /cco audit: your own transcripts, where the money went, what CCO saved | /cco orchestrate : Haiku does the reading and test runs | /cco config: thresholds | | /cco report, /cco roi, /cco digest: trends across sessions | /cco task: cost per task, state that survives /compact | /cco budget: budget and auto-compact | | /cco replay: recent sessions | /cco pack : the files a task needs, with line ranges | /cco export: Markdown or an offline HTML page | | /cco tools: what each tool costs | /cco anatomy, /cco git: a project map, git-aware context | /cco patterns: share learned patterns | | /cco overhead: the fixed context every session starts with | /cco claudemd, /cco shield, /cco coach, /cco templates | /cco clean, /cco doctor |

What runs on its own

• Read dedup. A re-read of a file that hasn't changed, in the same context,

• Budget and cache warnings at 50/70/85/95% of the budget, and a note when

• Task state across /compact. A small execution state you keep with

• A recap of the last session in a project when you start the next one.
• .contextignore keeps files you never need out of reads.

Does it really save?

We checked on real transcripts rather than guessing. In long Opus sessions about 60% of the cost is cache reads: the whole context re-read on every request. Repeated reads of unchanged files, which dedup removes, turned out to be rare. So the levers that matter are a smaller context and a cheaper model for the reading: the Haiku subagents, compacting at the right time, and not letting the cache go cold on a big context. /cco audit shows what that comes to in your own sessions, including what CCO's own messages cost.

Installation

claude.ai, the desktop app and Cowork: open the Directory, search for Context Optimizer, and add it.

Claude Code, from the plugin marketplace:

claude plugin marketplace add egorfedorov/claude-context-optimizer
claude plugin install context-optimizer@cco

Then restart Claude Code.

From a clone, to change the plugin and see it live:

git clone https://github.com/egorfedorov/claude-context-optimizer.git ~/claude-context-optimizer
claude --plugin-dir ~/claude-context-optimizer

Updating

claude plugin marketplace update cco
claude plugin update context-optimizer@cco

Upgrading from 4.x

• Commands moved under /cco in 5.0: /cco-audit is now /cco audit,

• The plugin was renamed in 4.21 from claude-context-optimizer to

claude plugin uninstall claude-context-optimizer@cco
claude plugin marketplace update cco
claude plugin install context-optimizer@cco

Your history stays in ~/.claude-context-optimizer/.

Requirements

• Claude Code with plugin support; the live meter needs a version with plugin

• Node.js 18 or later for the hooks and /cco.
• A POSIX shell for hooks: macOS and Linux as they are, Git Bash or WSL on

Settings

Everything lives in ~/.claude-context-optimizer/config.json; /cco config shows and changes it.

• "orchestrate": false turns off the session-start policy that sends work

• "quiet": true hides the donation line and the prompt coach.
• thresholds tunes the read-dedup and warning thresholds, each

Privacy

This plugin:

• Tracks file paths and line counts, never file contents
• Keeps a 200-character preview of each prompt (with its grade) so /cco coach can show trends
• Reads token-usage numbers from Claude Code's own session transcript to price the session; /cco audit reads your transcripts under ~/.claude/projects/ and prints only totals
• Runs git locally for /cco git, /cco pack and /cco anatomy; nothing else is executed
• Stores everything locally in ~/.claude-context-optimizer/, pruned automatically (90 days for session history, 14 for live-session state)
• Sends zero telemetry: the plugin's own code makes no network calls, no analytics, no tracking
• Reads no environment variables: every setting lives in ~/.claude-context-optimizer/config.json
• The live meter shows figures Claude Code already has, from inside Claude Code; it reads no files and sends nothing
• Ships two subagents (scout, runner) that Claude can call. They use Claude Code's own tools under your permission settings: scout only reads and searches the project (Read, Grep, Glob), and runner runs the commands it is given through Bash
• /cco export html writes one offline file: charts are inline SVG, with no scripts and nothing loaded from the web
• Can be fully wiped with /cco clean --reset-all

FAQ

Does it slow Claude Code down? Barely. Each hook event starts one Node process, about 50–65 ms, mostly Node's own startup. Only Read triggers a hook before the tool runs. /cco doctor shows the time on your machine. The meter runs inside Claude Code and costs nothing per request.

Which models does it know? Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5, Haiku 5.5 and Fable 5.1, plus the earlier Claude 5 and 4.x models, each with its own window, prices and cache rates. The session's real model is read from the transcript; /cco budget model sets only the fallback.

Does the prompt coach call a model? No. It is local heuristics, under 5 ms per prompt, no API calls.

Does it work with subagents? Yes. Hooks tell subagents apart by the hook's agent_id: each gets its own read cache, and its reads never count as the main context's waste.

Can read dedup break anything? It only skips a read of the same file, range and context with no change since. If Claude repeats the read right after a skip, it goes through, in case its copy was cleared.