token-savior-recall 4.13.0

Optimized MCP server for AI coding agents. Structural codebase navigation + persistent memory engine — 97.9% accuracy at −80% tokens on tsbench.

Token Savior -- v4.10

One MCP server. One profile. 97.9% on tsbench at -80% tokens. Structural code navigation, persistent memory, and Bash output compaction for AI coding agents.

mibayy.github.io/token-savior -- project site + benchmark landing github.com/Mibayy/tsbench -- benchmark source + fixtures

---

Benchmark -- 96 real coding tasks (Claude Opus 4.7, May 2026)

	Plain Claude Code	With Token Savior
Score	141 / 180 (78.3%)	188 / 192 (97.9%)
Active tokens / task	17 221	3 395 (-80%)
Wall time / task	110.6 s	18.9 s (-83%)

Reproduces with the optimized profile (single env var). See BENCHMARK-SUMMARY.

---

What's new

v4.12.0 -- Discipline guard (Jul 2026)

Measured here with scripts/ts_audit.py: get_edit_context: 0 vs 245 edits. The rule was in CLAUDE.md from the start and the nudges fired twelve times a day. Compliance was zero. A written reminder does not constrain anything.

hooks/ts_discipline_guard.py checks four rules where they happen: editing a symbol without its context, native Edit/Write on indexed source, native Read on indexed source, and grep/cat on indexed source through the shell. Requesting context unlocks that symbol only — one call at session start would otherwise open every later edit.

Opt-in, since it denies calls: set TS_DISCIPLINE_GUARD=1. TS_GUARD_OFF=1 wins once enabled, for module constants and decorators where structural editing does not fit. Every exit door is tested — non-code files, code outside any indexed project, vendored trees, file creation, and real Bash usage. A guard with false positives gets switched off, and one that is off protects less than none while still granting the illusion of protection.

v4.11.0 -- Memory engine ships to every agent (Jul 2026)

• The memory engine is now installed by ts init. It shipped in hooks/ since v4.2.0 but was referenced by no bundle, so ts init never wired it -- for any agent, Claude included. SessionStart carries the recall; without it the rest is decorative.
• OpenClaw support (ts init --agent openclaw). OpenClaw loads hook packs (a directory with HOOK.md + handler.js) rather than per-event shell commands, so the bundle declares a directory. Verified against openclaw 2026.4.14: openclaw hooks list reports it ready.
• Gemini CLI gets the memory engine, not just tool_capture.
• AGENTS.md, the convention read by ~30 agents.

Three hook models, not one format to translate. Facts below were read from each binary, not from its docs -- both mistakes they prevent are silent, a hook on an unknown event raises nothing and simply never fires:

	Claude Code	Codex	Gemini	OpenClaw
Model	command per event	command per event	command per event	hook pack
Timeouts	milliseconds	seconds	milliseconds	n/a
Shell tool	Bash	Bash	run_shell_command	no tool events

Hermes (Nous Research) needs nothing written: it is a pure MCP client. Note its mcp_<server>_<tool> prefix (single underscore) against mcp__<server>__<tool> elsewhere -- a matcher written for Claude Code silently misses every Hermes tool.

v4.10.0 -- Community fixes, ts gain, compact-only (Jul 2026)

Every open pull request from @andrebrait applied, plus the remaining reported bugs: list-shaped tool_response no longer crashes the capture hook (#48), TOKEN_SAVIOR_MAX_FILES reaches the server path again (#49), the index cache is keyed by the config that built it (#61), and the git compactors stop misparsing the Bash rewriter's own output -- with both enabled, a dirty tree was reported as clean (#46). New: ts gain reports savings without the dashboard (#63), and TOKEN_SAVIOR_PROFILE=compact-only suits setups that already bring their own symbol navigation (#42). Full detail in CHANGELOG.md.

v4.9.0 -- Edit-impact block (Jul 2026)

After a successful edit (replace_symbol_source / insert_near_symbol / add_field_to_model / move_symbol), the result now ends with a compact [EDIT IMPACT] block listing the edited symbol's callers + impacted tests -- so you catch a broken caller you never opened. Replaces the old pre-edit nudge, which converted 0 times across 219 edits in 425 audited sessions. Opt out with TOKEN_SAVIOR_EDIT_IMPACT=0.

v4.7 - v4.8 -- Self-audit + observations as MCP resources (Jul 2026)

• scripts/ts_audit.py: one-shot usage report (per-tool p50/p95, wasteful chains, adoption gaps, nudge fires, ML liveness). Re-run after a deploy to see whether behaviour actually moved.
• ts://obs/{id} stored memories are now first-class MCP resources -- clients that support resource @-mentions (Claude Code) pull a specific observation without a tool round-trip.
• Warm ts-daemon delegation for ts_search: 23 ms warm vs ~1.5-5.7 s cold.

v4.4 - v4.6 -- Adoption-gap passes, audit-driven (Jun - Jul 2026)

Chain nudges (find -> read, read -> full_context), persisted registered projects (kills set_project_root churn -- 51 redundant calls / 5.5 weeks), disk-cached tool embeddings, and a cold-start ts_search bridge over the warm daemon. Every change driven by an audit of real Claude Code usage, not a synthetic bench.

v4.3.0 -- bench-driven coverage push (May 2026)

Real-world bench against 7 days of transcripts (1130 Bash outputs) drove this release. Cumulative savings now sit at ~20.4 K tokens/week (19.3% match rate, 68.9% mean compaction) vs ~12 K/week on v4.2.0.

• Fixed pytest regex: now matches python3 -m pytest, uv run pytest, venv-prefixed forms, poetry/hatch/pdm/rye run pytest.
• 5 more git compactors: fetch, checkout, branch, worktree list, stash list.
• 4 more gh compactors: gh repo view, gh pr view, gh issue view, gh pr diff.
• grep, find, cat compactors. Group hits by file, strip common prefix, head/tail truncation. 83-96% savings on the fixtures.
• Compound command splitter: cd /root/foo && git status now compacts by picking the last meaningful segment of &&/; chains. Bails on subshells, heredocs, pipes, loops, unterminated quotes.

v4.2.0 -- coverage + hybrid mode + ts init

• 12 more compactors: jest, vitest, eslint, biome, kubectl get/logs, aws sts/ec2/lambda/logs/iam/dynamodb/s3, npm/yarn/pnpm list, pip list/show, curl. Peaks: 91.7% on aws ec2, 95% on jest all-green.
• Hybrid sandbox+compact mode. When a compactor matches but the compact text is still bulky (> 4 KB), the hook emits the compact preview AND sandboxes the full original. The agent can pull it via capture_get if it needs the detail.
• ts init --agent {claude,cursor,gemini,codex} CLI. Detects agent settings, deep-merges the hook config, dedups by (matcher, command), prints a unified diff, backs up settings.json, idempotent on re-run.
• ts_discover cross-project + format="adoption" reports TS-vs-native ratios per session with first/second-half trend.

v4.1.0 -- RTK-inspired Bash compaction + discover

• 14 Bash output compactors in a PostToolUse hook: git status/diff/log/ push/commit/add, pytest, cargo test/build/clippy, tsc, docker ps/logs, gh run list/view. Median 63%, peak 100% (a green pytest -q collapses to one line).
• PreToolUse Bash rewriter. Bare commands get denser variants before execution: git status -> --porcelain=v2 --branch, tsc -> --pretty false, pytest -> -q --tb=line, etc. 10 safe rules, guarded against composition operators and explicit verbose flags.
• get_usage_stats v2. ASCII sparkline (30 d), daily breakdown table (7 d), top-tools cumulative, format="json".
• New MCP tool ts_discover. Scans ~/.claude/projects/*/*.jsonl transcripts and flags missed TS opportunities (Read->Grep->Read chains, sequential find_symbol, edits without get_edit_context, memory_search without prior memory_index, native shell on code files). 30-day scan in ~2.5 s on a 343 MB transcript dir.

---

Quick start

pip install "token-savior-recall[mcp]"

Add to your MCP config (e.g. Claude Code):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "token-savior-recall": {
      "command": "/path/to/venv/bin/token-savior",
      "env": {
        "WORKSPACE_ROOTS": "/path/to/project1,/path/to/project2",
        "TOKEN_SAVIOR_CLIENT": "claude-code",
        "TOKEN_SAVIOR_PROFILE": "optimized"
      }
    }
  }
}

That's it. TOKEN_SAVIOR_PROFILE=optimized ships the Pareto-optimum config that wins tsbench. It bundles:

• tiny_plus (15 hot tools manifest)
• thin inputSchema (-44% manifest)
• capture sandbox disabled
• memory hooks gated for cross-project safety

No other tuning needed.

---

Activation (Bash compaction + rewriting)

Bash compaction and the PreToolUse rewriter are opt-in. Two env vars and one CLI call:

export TS_BASH_COMPACT=1       # PostToolUse output compactors (34 of them)
export TS_BASH_REWRITE=1       # PreToolUse command rewriter (10 rules)

ts init --agent claude --yes   # auto-merge hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json

ts init is idempotent. It detects existing hook entries, dedups by (matcher, command), prints a unified diff, and backs up settings.json to .bak-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS (UTC) before writing. Supported agents: claude, cursor, gemini, codex, openclaw. Pass --dry-run to preview, or --global to write the user-level config.

Optional audit log of every rewrite:

export TS_BASH_REWRITE_LOG=$HOME/.local/state/token-savior/rewrites.jsonl

---

Compactor catalog (34)

Family	Compactors
git	status, diff, log, push/pull, commit, add, fetch, checkout, branch, worktree list, stash list
gh	run list, run view, pr diff, pr view, issue view, repo view
test/lint	pytest, jest, vitest, eslint, biome, cargo test, cargo build/clippy, tsc
cloud	kubectl get, kubectl logs, aws sts, aws ec2, aws lambda, aws logs, aws iam, aws dynamodb, aws s3
docker	docker ps, docker logs
packaging	npm/yarn/pnpm list, pip list/show
shell catch-alls	grep, find, cat, curl

Each compactor is a pure function (no I/O, no globals) returning a token-efficient rendering. The dispatcher returns None when no matcher fires, leaving the existing sandbox path untouched. Compound commands (cd ... && cmd) fall through to the last meaningful segment.

---

ts_discover -- find missed TS opportunities

New MCP tool that scans your Claude Code transcripts for patterns where TS tools would have been cheaper than what the agent actually did.

ts_discover()                       # active project, last 30 days
ts_discover(project=None)           # ALL transcript projects
ts_discover(format="adoption")      # TS vs native ratio per session
ts_discover(format="adoption_json") # same, JSON

Findings: Read->Grep->Read chains, sequential find_symbol, edits without get_edit_context, memory_search without memory_index, native shell on code files. Args are pruned to load-bearing keys (PII-safe). Streams JSONL with mtime fast-skip.

---

ts init CLI

ts init --agent claude [--global] [--dry-run] [--yes]
ts init --agent cursor
ts init --agent gemini
ts init --agent codex
ts init --agent openclaw

Detects the target agent's settings location, deep-merges the Token Savior hook config (PostToolUse + PreToolUse), preserves existing hooks, dedups, prints a unified diff. Backs up to settings.json.bak-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS (UTC). Re-running is a no-op.

---

What it does

Claude Code reads whole files to answer questions about three lines, and forgets everything the moment a session ends. Token Savior fixes both, plus a third axis: it now compacts the noisy Bash output that bloats turn budgets between code reads.

It indexes your codebase by symbol -- functions, classes, imports, call graph -- so the model navigates by pointer instead of by cat. Measured reduction: 97% fewer chars injected across 170+ real sessions.

On top of that sits a persistent memory engine. Every decision, bugfix, convention, guardrail and session rollup is stored in SQLite WAL + FTS5

• vector embeddings, ranked by Bayesian validity and ROI, and re-injected as a compact delta at the start of the next session.

And on top of that, since v4.1, sit the Bash compactors and the PreToolUse rewriter. Bench numbers above.

---

Profile comparison

Profile	Tools exposed	Manifest tokens	When to use
optimized	15	~1.5 KT	Recommended default -- Pareto win on tsbench
auto	adaptive	~1-2 KT	Per-client telemetry-based (experimental)
tiny	6	~0.6 KT	Minimal hot loop
lean	51	~4 KT	Legacy -- broader surface
compact-only	1	~0.3 KT	Bash compaction only -- you already run symbol nav elsewhere
full	68	~6 KT	Everything exposed

You probably want optimized.

---

How it composes with adjacent tools

Token Savior spans several layers, and most neighbouring tools occupy exactly one of them. Overlap is opt-out per layer, so running both is usually fine once you disable the half you already have. Thanks to @chirag127 for mapping this out in #45.

Tool	Layer	Overlap	What to do
RTK	PostToolUse Bash output compression	Direct, with the 34 compactors	Pick one. TS_BASH_COMPACT=0 to defer to RTK
serena	Symbol-graph navigation	Direct, with find_symbol / get_dependents	Run TS as compact-only if serena is your navigator
codebase-memory	Persistent code graph	With the memory engine	TS_MEMORY_DISABLE=1
Ponytail, Caveman	Output-side compression (code and prose)	Partial, output side only	Complementary, no knob needed

The layers Token Savior owns that these do not: the PreToolUse Bash rewriter (it shrinks the command before it runs, not the output after), structural editing that keeps the index in sync, and the audit tools (detect_breaking_changes, find_dead_code, analyze_config).

If you only want the Bash layer, TOKEN_SAVIOR_PROFILE=compact-only advertises a single tool and leaves the compactors and rewriter running.

---

Token savings

Operation	Plain Claude	Token Savior	Reduction
find_symbol("send_message")	41M chars (full read)	67 chars	-99.9%
get_function_source("compile")	grep + cat chain	4.5K chars	direct
get_change_impact("LLMClient")	impossible	16K chars	new capability
96-task tsbench (Opus, plain vs ts)	17 221 active/task	3 395 active/task	-80%
7-day Bash output bench (v4.3)	~30 K tokens/week	~9.6 K tokens/week	~20.4 K/week

---

Install

pip (MCP server)

pip install "token-savior-recall[mcp]"
# Optional hybrid vector search:
pip install "token-savior-recall[mcp,memory-vector]"

uvx (no venv, no clone)

uvx token-savior-recall

Claude Code one-liner

claude mcp add token-savior -- /path/to/venv/bin/token-savior

Development

git clone https://github.com/Mibayy/token-savior
cd token-savior
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -e ".[mcp,dev]"
pytest tests/ -q

Suite size: 1898 passed, 2 skipped on main. CI green on Python 3.11 / 3.12 / 3.13.

---

Bench it yourself

The compactor numbers above come from replaying real Claude Code transcripts through the dispatcher. Two scripts live under scripts/:

python3 scripts/bench_compactors_real.py       # match rate + mean savings
python3 scripts/bench_compactors_unmatched.py  # top unmatched commands

The first walks ~/.claude/projects/*/*.jsonl, replays every Bash output through the registry, and reports per-family savings + overall match rate. The second buckets the unmatched commands so the next compactor target is obvious from the histogram.

To reproduce the tsbench score:

git clone https://github.com/Mibayy/tsbench && cd tsbench
python3 generate.py --seed 42
git tag v1
python3 breaking_changes.py
git tag v2
TS_PROFILE=tiny_plus TS_CAPTURE_DISABLED=1 python3 bench.py --tasks all --run B

---

Bonus: ts CLI for non-MCP agents

For agents without MCP (Cursor, Aider, Continue, scripts, CI), the ts command exposes a subset of the tools via shell:

ts use /path/to/project
ts get my_function          # JSON output
ts search 'pattern'
ts daemon start             # ~145ms per call vs 1.5s cold fork
ts init --agent cursor      # wire up Bash hooks for non-Claude agents

On Claude Code, prefer the MCP server -- measured cheaper than CLI on Opus 4.7. The CLI is there for the portability case.

---

Environment variables

All optional. Values shown as =1 also accept nothing else — set exactly 1; values shown as bool accept 1/true/yes (and on where noted).

Server & tool manifest

Var	Default	Purpose
WORKSPACE_ROOTS	current dir	Comma-separated project roots to index
PROJECT_ROOT	—	Single-root alternative to WORKSPACE_ROOTS
TOKEN_SAVIOR_PROFILE	full	Tool profile. optimized — the value the quickstart config and ts init recommend — ships the Pareto manifest, implies thin schemas, and omits the capture tools from the manifest
TS_THIN_SCHEMAS=1	off (on in optimized)	Strip verbose tool schemas from the manifest
TS_AUTO_HOT_K	10	Hot-tool count exposed by the telemetry-driven auto profile
TOKEN_SAVIOR_CHAIN_NUDGE	on	0/false/off disables chained-tool nudges
TS_MEMORY_DISABLE=1	off	Disable the memory engine (clean-context workloads)
TS_CAPTURE_DISABLED=1	off	Skip read-side capture sandboxing and drop the capture tools from the manifest (no profile flips this; optimized only hides the capture tools)
TS_CODE_MODE_DISABLE=1	off	Disable code-mode tools
TS_CODE_MODE_NODE	node	Node binary used by the code-mode sandbox
TS_RESOURCES_DISABLED	off (bool)	Don't expose observations as ts://obs/{id} MCP resources
TS_WARM_START	off (bool)	Pre-build project slots at startup
TOKEN_SAVIOR_NO_WARMUP	off (bool)	Skip the ts_search embedding warm-up
TS_SEARCH_COLD_DELEGATE	off (bool, on ok)	Delegate the cold ts_search call to a running ts daemon
TS_SOCK	/tmp/ts.sock	Unix socket of the ts daemon (CLI + cold delegate)
TOKEN_SAVIOR_CLIENT	auto-detected	Client label (claude-code, …) for telemetry/client detection
TOKEN_SAVIOR_SESSION_LABEL	—	Free-form label attached to session telemetry

Indexing

Var	Default	Purpose
INCLUDE_PATTERNS	built-in list	Colon-separated globs; replaces the default include list
EXCLUDE_PATTERNS	built-in list	Colon-separated globs; replaces the default exclude list
EXCLUDE_EXTRA	—	Colon-separated globs appended to the default excludes
TOKEN_SAVIOR_EXCLUDE_PATTERNS	—	Colon-separated globs appended at the indexer level
TOKEN_SAVIOR_MAX_FILE_SIZE	500000	Max file size (bytes) to index
TOKEN_SAVIOR_MAX_FILES	10000	Max files per project
TOKEN_SAVIOR_WATCHER	auto	File watcher: auto / on / off
TS_WATCHER_FORCE_POLLING	off	Force the polling watcher backend

Claude Code hooks

Var	Default	Purpose
TS_CAPTURE_THRESHOLD_BYTES	4096	Minimum tool-output size to sandbox
TS_CAPTURE_REPLACE=1	off	Strong-replace: tell the agent to ignore the inline output and capture_get the URI
TS_BASH_COMPACT=1	off	Enable PostToolUse Bash output compactors
TS_COMPACT_INLINE_THRESHOLD	4096	Hybrid mode: compact-result size above which the full original is also sandboxed
TS_COMPACT_TINY_THRESHOLD	256	Hybrid mode: compact-result size below which the sandbox is always skipped
TS_BASH_REWRITE=1	off	Enable the PreToolUse Bash command rewriter
TS_BASH_REWRITE_LOG	—	JSONL audit log of every rewrite
TS_HOOK_MINIMAL=1	off	SessionStart memory hook emits only the Memory Index block

Memory extras

Var	Default	Purpose
TS_VIEWER_PORT	off	Port for the observation web viewer (unset = disabled)
TS_AUTO_EXTRACT=1 + TS_API_KEY	off	LLM auto-extraction of memory observations (Anthropic API key required)
TS_MODEL	claude-sonnet-4-6	Auto-extraction model override
TOKEN_SAVIOR_MEMORY_AUTO_SAVE=1	off	Auto-save memory observations
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN + TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID	—	Critical-observation feed

Storage, dashboard, debugging

Var	Default	Purpose
TOKEN_SAVIOR_STATS_DIR	~/.local/share/token-savior	Telemetry + stats directory
TOKEN_SAVIOR_DASHBOARD_HOST	127.0.0.1	Dashboard bind host
TOKEN_SAVIOR_DASHBOARD_PORT	8921	Dashboard port
TOKEN_SAVIOR_INCLUDE_TMP_PROJECTS	off (bool)	Dashboard also lists projects under temp dirs
TOKEN_SAVIOR_DEBUG=1	off	Debug logging
TOKEN_SAVIOR_TRACE	off (bool)	MCP request lifecycle tracing

Not knobs: CLAUDECODE, CLAUDE_CODE_ENTRYPOINT, CLAUDE_PROJECT_ROOT, CLAUDE_CONTEXT_REMAINING_PCT, CODEX_* and HERMES_* are read for host/client detection — the environment sets them, you don't.

Naming trap: TS_PROFILE in the benchmark snippets is tsbench's variable; the server reads TOKEN_SAVIOR_PROFILE.

---

License

MIT