Tokens

Activate When

• /godmode:tokens, "token budget", "how expensive was this loop", "context cost"
• Any multi-round skill (optimize, refactor, debug, bench, terse) that runs a loop with DECIDE/LOG boundaries
• At session end, when the user asks "is my token usage trending up or down?"
• NOT for live streaming or real-time metering — this is append-per-round observability only. If you want a live meter, use a shell prompt, not this skill.
• Opt-out: if GODMODE_TOKENS=0 is set in the environment, this skill is a no-op. Privacy-sensitive workflows (medical, secrets, PII sweeps) can set this to disable all round-size logging for the session. Opt-out is sticky per session; never overridden by auto-activation.

Inputs

Ask once, cache for the session:

• session_id — stable id for the run. Default: date +%s at session start, reused across every round.
• skill — the skill driving the current round (read from session-state.json, not re-asked).
• round — monotonic counter, read from session-state.json.
• terse_on — boolean. 1 if $GODMODE_TERSE is non-empty, else 0.
• rtk_detected — 1 if command -v rtk returns zero, else 0. Logged as environment context, not used for computation.

Workflow

At each round boundary — specifically AFTER the DECIDE/LOG step of the Universal Protocol, so a full round has been emitted:

1. Skip entirely if GODMODE_TOKENS=0. Emit nothing, write nothing.
2. Measure input_chars — sum of bytes of all files READ during this round plus the emit text of the prior round. Source: session-state.json's round_context_files array (maintained by the orchestrator) and .godmode/last-round-emit.txt (atomically rewritten after every round).
3. Measure output_chars — byte count of the current round's emit text, captured into .godmode/last-round-emit.txt as the round closes.
4. Convert to approximate tokens via the heuristic in the "Token Heuristic" section below.
5. Read the prior cumulative_tokens for this session_id from the last matching row of .godmode/token-log.tsv. Default 0 for round 1.
6. Append ONE row to .godmode/token-log.tsv with the schema in "TSV Schema".
7. Roll over the log if row count exceeds 10000 (see "Log Rotation").

At session end (any stop_reason), emit the summary described in "Output Format".

Token Heuristic

Exact tokenization varies per model and is not worth a dependency on model-specific libraries for an observability skill. This skill uses one explicit, reproducible rule:

approx_tokens = ceil(char_count / 4)

Rationale: for English prose and code, 1 token averages ~3.8-4.2 characters across mainstream BPE tokenizers (GPT-4 and Llama families). Dividing by 4 gives a stable, model-agnostic estimate that is wrong by a consistent factor. Since this skill measures trends (is my loop getting more or less expensive?), a stable-biased estimator is sufficient. It is NOT accurate enough for billing, and the skill never claims to be.

Computed with awk — no python, no tiktoken, no external tokenizer binary:

tokens=$(awk -v c="$char_count" 'BEGIN { print int((c + 3) / 4) }')

char_count is wc -c of the measured file or text. Bytes, not graphemes. This is documented here so downstream readers of token-log.tsv can reproduce the math byte-for-byte.

TSV Schema

.godmode/token-log.tsv is append-only. Header written on first create:

timestamp	session_id	round	skill	input_tokens	output_tokens	total_tokens	terse_on	rtk_detected	cumulative_tokens

Column meanings:

• timestamp — ISO 8601, UTC, second precision.
• session_id — matches session-state.json.
• round — integer, 1-indexed, monotonic within a session.
• skill — name of the driving skill for this round (e.g. optimize, refactor).
• input_tokens — approximate tokens read as context during the round.
• output_tokens — approximate tokens emitted by the round.
• total_tokens — input_tokens + output_tokens.
• terse_on — 0 or 1. Useful for comparing terse vs. non-terse sessions.
• rtk_detected — 0 or 1. Useful for comparing environments that have rtk installed (input-side compression) vs. those that do not.
• cumulative_tokens — running total for this session_id including the current round.

Never rewrite history. Never insert. One row per (session_id, round) pair. If a row already exists for that pair, SKIP — do not double-log.

Output Format

At session end, emit a terse summary line (respects GODMODE_TERSE):

Terse:

Tokens: session={id} rounds={N} total={T} top={skill}({Ttop}) Δ={±pct}% vs last

Normal:

Tokens: session {id} completed {N} rounds, total {T} tokens.
Top skill: {skill} at {Ttop} tokens. Delta vs. last session for same skill: {±pct}%.

With --verbose, also print per-skill breakdown and top-3 expensive rounds:

Per-skill breakdown:
  optimize    4 rounds   12800 tok
  debug       2 rounds    3400 tok

Top 3 expensive rounds:
  R7 optimize  4200 tok   (1900 in / 2300 out)
  R3 optimize  3800 tok   (1700 in / 2100 out)
  R5 debug     2100 tok   ( 900 in / 1200 out)

Delta vs. last session is computed by scanning token-log.tsv backwards for the previous session_id whose top-skill matches, comparing total tokens, and printing signed percent.

Success Criterion

One shell command must answer "is my session's total token consumption going up or down over time?":

awk -F'\t' 'NR>1 { sum[$2]+=$7; t[$2]=$1 } END {
  for (s in sum) print t[s], s, sum[s]
}' .godmode/token-log.tsv | sort

This prints every session chronologically with its total. Piping to awk 'NR>1 { printf "%s %d delta=%+d\n", $2, $3, $3 - prev } { prev=$3 }' yields round-over-round deltas. If the last few deltas trend negative, the loop is getting cheaper (terse mode working, rtk helping, prompts tightening). If they trend positive, investigate.

Hard Rules

1. READ-ONLY to the codebase. The only files this skill may write are .godmode/token-log.tsv, .godmode/token-log.tsv.*.gz, .godmode/last-round-emit.txt, and the session-end summary it prints to stdout. Touching any source file = abort + fail loud.
2. Append-only. Never rewrite or edit existing rows. Rotation is the only way to shrink the active log, and it preserves history as a gzip.
3. Never block the loop. If measurement fails (disk full, permission denied, racing write), emit a warning to stderr and skip the append for that round. The loop must proceed.
4. Never depend on model-specific tokenizers. The char/4 heuristic is the contract. If a future version adds a more accurate estimator, it MUST be additive — old rows stay readable under the documented rule.
5. No real-time streaming. This is per-round append, not a live meter. One row per round, at the DECIDE/LOG boundary, no sooner.
6. Respect GODMODE_TOKENS=0 unconditionally. Opt-out wins over every other flag, including --verbose.
7. Persists across sessions. The file lives in .godmode/, which is committed with the rest of godmode state. Never gitignore token-log.tsv.
8. No external deps beyond awk, wc, gzip, date, and standard Unix utilities. No python, no jq, no node, no tiktoken.
9. .godmode/last-round-emit.txt is a disposable scratch cache: it holds only the previous round's emit text and is atomically rewritten every round. Projects that commit .godmode/ state SHOULD still gitignore this one file (the project maintainer adds .godmode/last-round-emit.txt to .gitignore) — it frequently quotes repo code and can carry secrets surfaced in prior output. This is the one deliberate exception to Rule 7: token-log.tsv (append-only history) stays committed; last-round-emit.txt (rewritten scratch) does not need to be.

Keep / Discard Discipline

This skill does not keep or discard anything — it only observes. Rounds driven by other skills may themselves be kept or discarded per the Universal Protocol; the token row is logged either way, with the driving skill's final keep/discard status inferred from results.tsv (not re-measured here). Observing a discarded round is still valuable signal: expensive discards point to skills that burn context without moving the metric.

Stop Conditions

• session_ended — the driving skill hit target_reached, budget_exhausted, diminishing_returns, or stuck. Emit summary, flush any pending row, exit.
• opted_out — GODMODE_TOKENS=0. Exit silently after the first check.
• rotation_failed — gzip returned non-zero or disk full. Emit stderr warning, continue without rotating, do NOT lose the active log.

On any stop: the last row written is authoritative; the summary reflects exactly what is in token-log.tsv, never more.