mcp-context-cost

shopify-dev — context cost

5,624 tokens across 5 tools — moderate (5–15K). Measured 2026-08-16 under methodology v1.0.

   
server (self-reported) shopify-dev-mcp v1.14.4
status measured
tokenizer tiktoken / o200k_base
launch command npx -y @shopify/dev-mcp@latest
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 6c863ee06d8d4d8fb2ade2e07673c087b75cc1482b3e521e9c9375151860c659
category vendor-official
source https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/build/devmcp (GitHub repo not public)

Where the tokens are

tool tokens share description schema
learn_shopify_api 2,518 44.8% 2,102 344
validate_graphql_codeblocks 1,179 21.0% 202 949
validate_component_codeblocks 1,173 20.9% 547 550
validate_theme 451 8.0% 194 236
search_docs_chunks 301 5.4% 29 253

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 5,624 the badge number — every byte tools/list returned
o200k, Anthropic fields only 5,584 0.7% of the capture is MCP-only metadata
Claude, same fields 9,805 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/shopify-dev/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