mcp-context-cost

kubernetes — context cost

5,268 tokens across 23 tools — moderate (5–15K). Measured 2026-08-16 under methodology v1.0.

   
server (self-reported) kubernetes v4.1.4
status measured
tokenizer tiktoken / o200k_base
launch command npx -y mcp-server-kubernetes
isolation docker · public.ecr.aws/docker/library/node:22-slim · network bridge · network enabled for package fetch; clean FS, no host credentials
env vars supplied none
canonical SHA-256 20126671be70fdb77743a595f195002612b03c889b348447ed9ff4d7057f8c1c
category community
source https://github.com/Flux159/mcp-server-kubernetes

Where the tokens are

tool tokens share description schema
kubectl_create 945 17.9% 14 919
node_management 341 6.5% 14 308
kubectl_delete 322 6.1% 16 286
kubectl_logs 308 5.8% 12 276
kubectl_rollout 292 5.5% 19 252
install_helm_chart 291 5.5% 13 257
kubectl_patch 287 5.4% 19 248
kubectl_get 286 5.4% 14 252
kubectl_generic 272 5.2% 11 241
exec_in_pod 256 4.9% 43 193
upgrade_helm_chart 226 4.3% 6 199
kubectl_apply 224 4.3% 10 194
kubectl_context 178 3.4% 13 145
explain_resource 177 3.4% 8 149
kubectl_describe 161 3.1% 12 128
list_api_resources 159 3.0% 8 131
kubectl_scale 148 2.8% 4 124
uninstall_helm_chart 106 2.0% 6 78
port_forward 91 1.7% 11 61
kubectl_reconnect 76 1.4% 44 12
stop_port_forward 45 0.9% 5 19
ping 43 0.8% 13 12
cleanup 32 0.6% 4 9

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 2026-08-16 against claude-opus-5 via Anthropic’s count_tokens (method tools-delta/v1).

  tokens  
o200k, full capture 5,268 the badge number — every byte tools/list returned
o200k, Anthropic fields only 5,089 3.4% of the capture is MCP-only metadata
Claude, same fields 9,165 1.74× 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.

Re-derive it

npx -y mcp-context-cost verify results/kubernetes/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.

Badge JSON · All servers · Leaderboard · Methodology