DEV Community: makayis

AI coding is entering its "efficiency-first" phase: tokens, memory, and skills

makayis — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 20:45:34 +0000

A year ago the question was "which model is best?" This week the GitHub
trending lists point somewhere else: how do we make agents cheaper, less
forgetful, and more reusable?

I looked through a few daily open-source trend reports from this week
(one,
two). Three themes
keep showing up.

1. The "token economy"

One report describes a strong push to cut LLM overhead through context
compression. Tools like Headroom and Caveman keep appearing, and Headroom
advertises up to 95% token savings on tool outputs and logs.

A caution from me: a published study of agent sessions
(arXiv 2607.12161) found that cutting
tokens doesn't always lower the billed cost, because prompt caching dominates
the bill, and that compression can hurt task success. Token counts are not the
same as dollars.

2. Persistent memory

Projects like mem0 and claude-mem keep trending. The idea is to move agents
from stateless scripts to something that remembers across sessions. That's
exciting, but it raises a real question: what should an agent remember, and
how do you stop stale memory from misleading it?

3. Skills and harnesses

Reusable "agent skills" for tools like Claude Code are getting a lot of
attention, as developers package their workflows instead of re-prompting
from scratch.

What I make of it

Stars are a popularity signal, not proof that something works, and these
reports are automated summaries. But the direction is clear: the next gains
seem to come from how we use models, not only from bigger ones.

What are you using to keep AI coding costs under control? Memory, compression,
skills, or just shorter chats?

Stop paying for old chat history: a free BYOK VS Code AI agent that compresses long sessions

makayis — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 20:41:21 +0000

Long AI coding chats get expensive for a simple reason: every turn resends
the whole conversation, so turn 30 costs far more than turn 3.

I built CodeCook to fix that. It's a free, MIT-licensed VS Code extension
(disclosure: I'm the author).

What it does

Summarizes older turns and bulky tool output so you stop paying for them again
Keeps your plan intact across summaries
Shows token and cost estimates per turn, with daily, weekly, or monthly spend caps
Checkpoints every turn: review diffs, revert, or rewind
BYOK: Gemini, OpenAI, Claude, Azure OpenAI, or Bedrock, with no markup

In one long session, a single turn went from about 800k to about 15k tokens.
That's a best case, not an average, so I'm testing real billed cost next.

Try it: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=makayis.codecook

I'd love feedback on what breaks or what's missing.

I built a BYOK VS Code agent that cuts token costs by compressing old chat turns

makayis — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 18:58:07 +0000

The problem

In a long AI coding session, every turn resends everything you already paid for: all the old messages and all the tool output. The bill keeps growing even when the work doesn't. I wanted to use bigger models without worrying about tokens.

What is CodeCook?

CodeCook is a free, MIT-licensed VS Code extension: a coding agent in your sidebar that you run with your own API key (BYOK). You pay your provider directly, with no markup and no lock-in.

Demo

How it cuts cost

Compression of old turns: older turns and bulky tool output are summarized instead of resent every time, so you pay for new work, not old work.
Plans survive summarization: build a plan, reopen it from the command palette, and the agent keeps following it in long sessions.
Visible costs: a token optimizer, savings report, and spend estimates, plus daily, weekly, or monthly caps so a long session never surprises you.

In one long agent session, a single turn went from 800,787 to 14,857 tokens (about 98% fewer) with the plan and work intact. That was one turn in a long session, not an average. Savings vary with session length.

Built for real work

Every turn is checkpointed. Review native diffs, keep or revert all edits, or rewind to an earlier turn and restore your files.
Highlight code in the editor or text in the terminal and choose Add to Chat.

Providers

Google Gemini (Vertex AI or API key), OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Azure OpenAI, and AWS Bedrock. You only need one.

Getting started

Install from the Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=makayis.codecook
Open CodeCook in the activity bar and sign in with Google or GitHub. This creates a local account stored only in VS Code and gives CodeCook no access to your repositories.
Connect one provider
Ask the agent to work on your workspace and review the diffs

Website: https://www.codecook.makayis.com

Feedback

CodeCook is free and I'm improving it actively. I'd love to know:

How much you save in real sessions
Which providers or features are missing
Anything that feels rough

Thanks for reading!