Field noteEngineering
ashlr-plugin: same agent, fewer tokens
Coding agents burn most of their budget reading files and search results. ashlr-plugin gives them tools that return less, without losing what matters.
The field note
When a coding agent works, it spends a lot of its budget reading. It opens whole files to find one function. It runs a search and gets back hundreds of lines. Every one of those lines costs tokens, and tokens cost money and fill up the agent's memory.
ashlr-plugin replaces those high-volume tools with 40 compact versions, delivered as an MCP server. The read tool returns what the agent needs from a file, not the whole thing. The search tool returns the useful matches. The goal in the project's own words: same agent, fewer tokens.
