mcp-context-cost

githits — context cost

12,833 tokens across 16 tools — moderate (5–15K). Measured 2026-09-04 under methodology v1.0.

An Anthropic request carries 12,384 of those tokens as tool definitions, and Claude counts those at 20,689.

   
server (self-reported) githits v0.12.1
status measured
tokenizer tiktoken / o200k_base
launch command npx -y githits mcp start
isolation docker · public.ecr.aws/docker/library/node:22-slim · network bridge · linux/amd64 · network enabled for package fetch; clean FS, no host credentials
env vars supplied none
canonical SHA-256 1de4342682e058fb6395fc1a42dbcb9fa87838dc26852ba6810e57cc388ab81e
category community
source https://github.com/githits-com/githits-cli

Where the tokens are

tool tokens share description input schema
search 2,270 17.7% 409 1,821
code_grep 1,681 13.1% 365 1,272
code_files 1,424 11.1% 329 1,054
code_read 1,170 9.1% 350 777
pkg_changelog 967 7.5% 343 573
pkg_deps 805 6.3% 247 516
pkg_vulns 778 6.1% 369 363
pkg_upgrade_review 700 5.5% 171 486
pkg_info 509 4.0% 232 233
get_example 474 3.7% 201 228
search_status 448 3.5% 234 174
feedback 428 3.3% 153 232
docs_read 410 3.2% 126 242
docs_list 404 3.1% 145 217
search_language 241 1.9% 83 117
quick_start 122 1.0% 59 24

Each tool is tokenized on its own, so the parts do not sum exactly to the whole: the array adds its own brackets and commas, and the tokenizer merges tokens across object boundaries. The badge number is always the count of the whole array, never a sum of parts.

What this costs on Claude

Measured 2026-09-14 against claude-opus-5 via Anthropic’s count_tokens (method tools-delta/v1).

  tokens  
o200k, full capture 12,833 the badge number — every byte tools/list returned
o200k, Anthropic fields only 12,384 3.5% of the capture is MCP-only metadata
Claude, same fields 20,689 1.61× the badge number

An Anthropic tool definition carries name, description, and input_schema and nothing else, so title, annotations, outputSchema, execution, and icons are dropped before the request — that is the second row. The third row is the same tools counted by Anthropic, which is larger than the second because Anthropic’s tokenizer is denser on this content than o200k_base and the API adds its own framing (at most 328 tokens of it fixed, measured against a single minimal tool). The two effects run in opposite directions, which is why the Claude number is not a fixed multiple of the badge.

Over time

date tokens tools release measured in change
2026-09-03 12,600 16 not recorded docker —
2026-09-04 12,833 16 0.12.1 docker +233

Full series: results/history.csv.

Re-derive it

npx -y mcp-context-cost verify results/githits/measurement.json

That re-tokenizes the published capture and checks the count and the hash. If it disagrees with the badge, the badge is wrong — open an issue and it gets corrected.

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