Show HN: Token compression CLI to save Codex/Astra costs

Yolanda and Spencer released a free CLI token compression tool for Codex that cuts input tokens by 29.6% and saves up to 30% on costs, after they burned $700/day per person on API usage. The tool uses a proxy and a fine-tuned Qwen model trained to preserve agent trajectory, removing tool call results before they return to the model while leaving the KV cache untouched. The code is available at github.com/spenmcke/compress and installs via a curl script from install.everestagi.com.

Hey HN Yolanda and Spencer here - wanted to share a token compression tool that we’ve built for ourselves to save 30% costs on codex After maxing out sub and burning $700/day per person on api, we fine tuned a compression model to trim codex's tool call output to reduce input token + cache. It cut down tokens by 29.6% and now I just leave it on by default in Codex. To avoid messing up w/ cache, we use proxy + fine tuned qwen model trained on preserving agent trajectory to remove tool call results before they go back to the model, leaving kv cache untouched. The cli is free for everyone to use https://github.com/spenmcke/compress https://github.com/spenmcke/compress . Just lmk ur feedback and hacks to shave even more costs on astra If you want to integrate it into your product to offer the best models at low cost, I can set you up with an sdk and api keys PS: It’s built for coding agents, not conversational agents. I optimized it for file retrieval accuracy, trajectory preservation, and quality to get up to 30% cost reduction depending on how context-heavy the task is. On security and privacy side, it's a proxy wrapping your local codex and ZDR so it doesn't retain any queries. It’s on by default in codex and when you don’t want compression, you can use codex --uncompress to disable it. Give it a try: code is in https://github.com/spenmcke/compress https://github.com/spenmcke/compress You can install the cli using curl -fsSL https://install.everestagi.com/install.sh https://install.everestagi.com/install.sh | sh && source ~/.config/everest/shell.sh Love to hear any feedback and learn your hacky ways to save token costs too Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49911910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49911910 Points: 5 Comments: 0