Token Aware Coding

Working token-efficiently

These are habits, not a checklist to run every time — apply them by default.

• Prefer Grep/Glob over a full Read when you only need to find or confirm something (a symbol, a device name, whether a pattern already exists). Read the whole file only once you actually need to edit it or read surrounding context matters.
• Use precise @file mentions instead of describing "the file that handles X" and having the agent search for it, when you already know the path.
• Summarize internally after 3-4 tool calls in a research/search sequence rather than carrying every intermediate result forward verbatim — keep the conclusion, drop the scratch work.
• Don't re-read a file you already have the relevant content from earlier in the same task — reuse what's already in context instead of re-fetching it "to be safe."
• Grep ROADMAP.md's Tasks table for the one task ID/row you need instead of reading the whole file once it has grown to dozens of tasks across several releases — the plan-first workflow (~/.claude/CLAUDE.md rule 13) means this table only grows, and most operations (flipping a Status, checking one acceptance criterion) only ever need one row.
• Don't restate the whole conversation or task back to the user before acting — a one-line "doing X" (or nothing, straight into the tool call) beats a paragraph of preamble.
• Delegate verbose or exploratory work to a subagent (when available) rather than doing wide exploration inline — the subagent's intermediate output doesn't consume the main session's context.
• Use /clear or /compact between unrelated tasks in the same session instead of letting context accumulate across work that has nothing to do with each other.
• Periodically, /context shows what's actually consuming the window — useful when a session feels slow or a task keeps needing trimming.

None of this trades off correctness — when a task genuinely needs a full read or a broad search, do it. This skill is about not doing the expensive thing by default when a cheaper one answers the same question.