Token budget
The page people skip and should not.
claude plugin details <path> reports a component inventory and projected token cost,
split two ways:
- Always-on tokens, added to every session by skill and agent descriptions whether or not anything fires
- On-invoke tokens, paid only when a component actually runs
A preset costing a thousand always-on tokens is a bad preset no matter how good its content is, because every engineer pays for it in every session forever.
How to keep it low
Section titled “How to keep it low”Keep SKILL.md short and push occasional detail into sibling reference files, which are
read on demand. Progressive disclosure is not a style preference here; it is the
difference between a skill that costs nothing at rest and one that taxes every session.
Write descriptions as trigger conditions rather than summaries. A precise description is both shorter and more accurate at firing.
Prefer one skill that covers a domain over five that split it, unless the split genuinely changes when each fires.
Measuring
Section titled “Measuring”CI in {{ORG}}/agent-plugins runs plugin details on every plugin. Treat a rising
always-on number the way you would treat a rising bundle size.