Context tax: what your setup costs on every turn
Data: 7204 public rigs · updated 2026-10-09
"My Max plan runs out in two hours" is the most common complaint about coding agents this year. A big, invisible driver is the stuff loaded into every request: instruction files, MCP tool schemas, and skill/subagent descriptions. We call that the context tax.
2.3kmedian rig (tokens)
5.0kaverage
11.5k90th percentile
Distribution
| 0–1.0k | 2094 | |
| 1.0k–2.0k | 1251 | |
| 2.0k–4.0k | 1571 | |
| 4.0k–8.0k | 1163 | |
| 8.0k–16.0k | 670 | |
| 16.0k–32.0k | 307 | |
| 32.0k–∞ | 148 |
What drives it
- Instruction files. The median root CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md is ~1.6k tokens; 962 rigs ship more than 5k tokens of always-loaded instructions (incl.
@imports). - MCP servers. Each server's tool schemas ride along with every request unless your harness defers them. Large servers cost thousands of tokens each.
- Skills & subagents. Only their name + description is preloaded — cheap individually, but 80 skills add up.
How we estimate
Characters ÷ 4 for root instruction files (plus one level of @imports) and for skill/subagent frontmatter descriptions; MCP schema sizes from a table of typical tool counts per server (2.5k tokens for unknown servers). It's an estimate for comparison, not a bill. Full method.
Leanest high-power rigs
8+ components, lowest context tax.
delphinus/dotfiles
my dotfiles
Fort Knox 0 tok ·
agilesteel/.dotfiles
—
Automator 0 tok ·
ashishmerani/claude-code-security-harness
A security harness for AI coding agents. Supply chain, command scope, config integrity. Build specifications.
Automator 0 tok ·
iWaraxe/my-claude-setup
My Claude Code configuration with hooks and intelligent summaries
Automator 0 tok ·
danielzm2500/claude-config
Mi configuración global de Claude Code — comandos, hooks y settings
Pragmatist 0 tok ·
pbhwheeler/claude-config
Portable Claude Code config: settings.json, hooks, status line, and a bootstrap script for fresh dev machines
Automator 0 tok ·