Show HN: Lowfat – pluggable CLI filter that saved 91.8% of my LLM tokens

A developer has released Lowfat, a pluggable CLI filter tool that reduced their LLM token usage by 91.8% over two months. The single-binary tool sits between CLI commands and AI agents, stripping verbose output like full YAML dumps to only pass relevant data, with a plugin system for customizing filters per command. The project aims to help users avoid token limits while maintaining local-first, telemetry-free data ownership.

Hi HN, Not sure if anyone would be interested. But, just wanted to share that I've been maintaining my small tool called 'lowfat' that helps me filters some of my verbose CLI output. It's a single binary, works as an agent hook or a shell wrapper. It has a plugin system to customize filters per command. The idea is pretty simple: agents don't need the full kubectl get -o yaml or any 10k-line dump to make decisions. So that lowfat sits in between, strips the noise, and passes through what matters. Here's my real report after 2 months of personal use: lowfat history --all lowfat plugin candidates ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────── command runs avg raw cost savings source status 1 kubectl get 101x 14.4K 1.5M 93.9% plugin good 2 grep 103x 13.5K 1.4M 96.2% plugin good 3 git diff 81x 995 80.6K 57.9% built-in good 4 kubectl 90x 485 43.6K 33.6% plugin good 5 docker 127x 5.5K 693.6K 96.1% built-in good 6 ls 489x 117 57.3K 56.2% built-in good 7 find 30x 16.5K 495.0K 95.5% plugin good 8 git show 63x 490 30.9K 38.0% built-in good 9 git 177x 368 65.2K 76.1% built-in good 10 git log 86x 556 47.8K 78.5% built-in good 11 kubectl logs 5x 3.6K 17.8K 43.0% plugin good 12 git status 86x 152 13.1K 58.0% built-in good 13 docker ps 20x 467 9.3K 52.8% plugin good 14 kubectl describe 6x 656 3.9K 1.2% plugin weak 15 docker images 9x 940 8.5K 61.8% built-in good 16 k get 2x 2.1K 4.2K 35.9% plugin good 17 terraform 10x 395 3.9K 32.1% plugin good 18 git commit 32x 77 2.5K 0.0% built-in weak 19 docker build 8x 487 3.9K 37.6% built-in good 20 docker compose 22x 979 21.5K 89.4% built-in good total: 4.4M raw → 4.1M saved 91.8% My toolset above is kind limited, but it works pretty well for my usecase without any interruption Kinda help me not reaching the token limit for my company Bedrock limit usage and keep optimizing the saving on the go for later usage.But, why not alternatives https://github.com/zdk/lowfat alternatives https://github.com/zdk/lowfat alternatives ? The answers are: - My goal is to make the core lightweight but extensible via plugins i.e. not trying to bundle every command in the installed binary so that people own their output filters. - Customizable per usecase via plugin or filter pipelines as I am using my own toolset. - Customizable for non-public CLI tools, for example, some enterprise might have their interal CLI tools that public won't have access. - People should own their data. So the design is local-first, No telemetry forever. - I kinda love UNIX-style composible pipes, so lowfat-filter has implemented this style. - Be able to adjust aggressiveness of the filter, so we can control that we won't strip something the agent needed. GitHub: https://github.com/zdk/lowfat https://github.com/zdk/lowfat Anyway, if anyone is interested, feedbacks and questions are welcome Thanks Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48409955 Points: 1 Comments: 0