Why it matters
Starting context is a fixed overhead that gets reprocessed on every later turn, so a 10,000-token trim compounds over a long session. Most of the removable bloat came from add-ons installed once to try out and never cleaned up.
Tokenmaxxing read
Built-in system tools alone took 28,500 tokens, and no one can remove those. The controllable slice was plugins injecting skills, agents and session messages, plus auto-memory adding about 4,000 tokens to the system prompt. Audit agent add-ons the way you audit dependencies.
Source takeaway
Change one thing at a time and re-run /context in a fresh session. Turning off four plugins (claude-mem, claude-memory, Caveman, understand-anything) cut custom agents from 943 tokens to 74; removing one of the author's own skills saved only about 100.
