I built a CLI harness that strips JS/TS function bodies with Babel AST to save 80% context tokens

Amanulla Shaikh built and open-sourced Apex Agents, a CLI harness that uses Babel's AST parser to strip JavaScript and TypeScript function bodies while preserving types, generics, parameters, and exports, compacting an approximately 13k-token codebase to about 1.4k tokens (88.5% reduction) in testing. The tool also ships a pre-commit hook that blocks AI agents from modifying or skipping tests and halts commits containing high-entropy API keys, 38 specialist persona rules for .cursor/rules, and a native MCP JSON-RPC stdio server for Claude Desktop and Cursor.

While working on large Next.js and TypeScript repositories, I noticed AI coding agents Cursor, Claude Code constantly burning through context limits. They were reading 500-line implementation files when all they really needed were the types, interfaces, and exported signatures. To solve this mechanically, I engineered and open-sourced Apex Agents. How It Works: Babel AST Compactor npx apex-agents compact : Parses TypeScript, JSX, and JavaScript using @babel/parser and replaces function bodies with {} while preserving all types, generics, parameters, and exports. In our tests, an ~13k token codebase compacted down to ~1.4k tokens 88.5% reduction into an APEX CONTEXT.md file. Pre-Commit Anti-Cheat & Secret Guard .git/hooks/pre-commit : Diff auditor physically prevents AI agents from modifying or skipping tests to fake a "pass", and halts any accidental commit containing high-entropy API keys. 38 Specialist Personas .cursor/rules : Injects domain-specific engineering rules directly into .cursor/rules for database performance, React 19 architecture, and Lighthouse optimization. Native MCP Server: Built-in JSON-RPC stdio server ready to plug into Claude Desktop or Cursor MCP settings. Try it in any repo: bash: npx apex-agents init GitHub: github.com/AmanullaShaikh/apex-agents https://github.com/AmanullaShaikh/apex-agents NPM: npmjs.com/package/apex-agents https://www.npmjs.com/package/apex-agents Feedback and pull requests are welcome