Token Budget Advisor

---
name: token-budget-advisor
description: "Use when offers the user an informed choice about how much response depth to consume before answering. Use this skill when the user explicitly wants to control response length, depth, or token budget. TRIGGER when: \"token budget\", \"token count\", \"token usage\"... Triggers on \"token-budget-advisor\", \"token budget advisor\", \"advisor\"."metadata:
  origin: community
---

# 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                           |
| Complex      | 15× – 40×        | Multi-part analysis, comparisons, architecture      |
| Creative     | 10× – 30×        | Stories, essays, narrative writing                  |

Response window = `input_tokens × mult_min` to `input_tokens × mult_max` (but don’t exceed your model’s configured output-token limit).

### Step 3 — Present depth options

Present this block **before** answering, using the actual estimated numbers:

```
Analyzing your prompt...

Input: ~[N] tokens  |  Type: [type]  |  Complexity: [level]  |  Language: [lang]

Choose your depth level:

[1] Essential   (25%)  ->  ~[tokens]   Direct answer only, no preamble
[2] Moderate    (50%)  ->  ~[tokens]   Answer + context + 1 example
[3] Detailed    (75%)  ->  ~[tokens]   Full answer with alternatives
[4] Exhaustive (100%)  ->  ~[tokens]   Everything, no limits

Which level? (1-4 or say "25% depth", "50% depth", "75% depth", "100% depth")

Precision: heuristic estimate ~85-90% accuracy (±15%).