{"slug": "stop-paying-for-old-chat-history-a-free-byok-vs-code-ai-agent-that-compresses", "title": "Stop paying for old chat history: a free BYOK VS Code AI agent that compresses long sessions", "summary": "A developer released CodeCook, a free, MIT-licensed VS Code extension that compresses long AI coding sessions to cut token costs, reporting a single turn dropping from roughly 800k to about 15k tokens in one long session. The developer notes the figure is a best case rather than an average and says real billed cost testing is next.", "body_md": "Long AI coding chats get expensive for a simple reason: every turn resends\n\nthe whole conversation, so turn 30 costs far more than turn 3.\n\nI built **CodeCook** to fix that. It's a free, MIT-licensed VS Code extension\n\n(disclosure: I'm the author).\n\n**What it does**\n\nIn one long session, a single turn went from about 800k to about 15k tokens.\n\nThat's a best case, not an average, so I'm testing real billed cost next.\n\n**Try it:** [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=makayis.codecook](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=makayis.codecook)\n\nI'd love feedback on what breaks or what's missing.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/stop-paying-for-old-chat-history-a-free-byok-vs-code-ai-agent-that-compresses", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/makayis_90942586425f8f6bb/stop-paying-for-old-chat-history-a-free-byok-vs-code-ai-agent-that-compresses-long-sessions-5h17", "published_at": "2026-10-12 20:41:21+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-12 20:51:25.986772+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "developer-tools", "large-language-models", "ai-agents"], "entities": ["CodeCook", "Visual Studio Code"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/stop-paying-for-old-chat-history-a-free-byok-vs-code-ai-agent-that-compresses", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/stop-paying-for-old-chat-history-a-free-byok-vs-code-ai-agent-that-compresses.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/stop-paying-for-old-chat-history-a-free-byok-vs-code-ai-agent-that-compresses.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/stop-paying-for-old-chat-history-a-free-byok-vs-code-ai-agent-that-compresses.jsonld"}}