mcp-context-cost

ssh-manager — context cost

8,446 tokens across 37 tools — moderate (5–15K). Measured 2026-09-04 under methodology v1.0.

An Anthropic request carries 8,149 of those tokens as tool definitions, and Claude counts those at 14,196.

   
server (self-reported) mcp-ssh-manager v3.8.5
status measured
tokenizer tiktoken / o200k_base
launch command npx -y mcp-ssh-manager
isolation docker · public.ecr.aws/docker/library/node:22-slim · network bridge · architecture not on record · network enabled for package fetch; clean FS, no host credent
env vars supplied none
canonical SHA-256 22ce75f27b9a8bf50f1cb77824b5769d6041d1f3c25032916b5201b1be31f5d7
category community
source https://github.com/bvisible/mcp-ssh-manager

Where the tokens are

tool tokens share description input schema
ssh_sync 477 5.6% 174 285
ssh_backup_create 387 4.6% 84 284
ssh_deploy 333 3.9% 106 208
ssh_db_dump 316 3.7% 91 206
ssh_process_manager 309 3.7% 99 191
ssh_group_manage 297 3.5% 125 153
ssh_db_import 292 3.5% 90 183
ssh_execute_group 291 3.4% 135 137
ssh_backup_restore 286 3.4% 90 177
ssh_backup_schedule 279 3.3% 85 174
ssh_alert_setup 275 3.3% 97 159
ssh_db_query 270 3.2% 77 174
ssh_tunnel_create 253 3.0% 90 143
ssh_execute_sudo 242 2.9% 111 111
ssh_db_list 239 2.8% 73 147
ssh_execute 233 2.8% 112 103
ssh_tail 230 2.7% 95 117
ssh_monitor 221 2.6% 97 106
ssh_history 200 2.4% 97 85
ssh_key_manage 196 2.3% 86 91
ssh_session_send 193 2.3% 92 82
ssh_command_alias 192 2.3% 81 92
ssh_backup_list 187 2.2% 78 90
ssh_upload 185 2.2% 94 73
ssh_alias 182 2.2% 82 82
ssh_download 176 2.1% 85 73
ssh_service_status 176 2.1% 85 72
ssh_hooks 170 2.0% 83 69
ssh_connection_status 166 2.0% 77 70
ssh_session_start 163 1.9% 88 56

7 smaller tools omitted (1,028 tokens combined) — all of them are in the raw capture.

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 8,446 the badge number — every byte tools/list returned
o200k, Anthropic fields only 8,149 3.5% of the capture is MCP-only metadata
Claude, same fields 14,196 1.68× 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 8,446 37 not recorded docker —
2026-09-04 8,446 37 3.8.5 docker no change

Full series: results/history.csv.

Re-derive it

npx -y mcp-context-cost verify results/ssh-manager/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