JayPokale/Chisle

Cut your AI coding agent's token bill on three axes: terse prose, YAGNI-first code, and tool-output compression. Claude Code, Pi, Cursor, Codex, Gemini + 4 more. Zero deps, published benchmarks including the runs it loses

Summary

Chisle is a zero-dependency JavaScript project that installs token-reduction rules for AI coding agents, emphasizing terse prose, minimal code, and compressed tool output. It began as a Claude Code plugin, while its ruleset and selected hooks are also available for agents including Pi, Cursor, Codex, Gemini, Copilot, and OpenCode.

What it is useful for

Chisle is useful when coding agents repeatedly spend tokens on verbose explanations, speculative abstractions, boilerplate, or oversized command results. Its rules encourage an engineer to reuse existing code, prefer standard-library or platform features, and add a dependency only when justified, while explicitly protecting validation, security, data-loss handling, and accessibility.

The README provides a concrete order-state-machine example. In one recorded comparison using the same model and prompt, the unmodified response contained 1,342 answer tokens across 125 lines; the Chisle-assisted response contained 450 tokens across 54 lines by using one transition map and one enforcement method. The repository also reports that oversized tool output was reduced by about 46% across 171 sessions.

That input-side compression is not available identically everywhere. Native hooks are documented for Claude Code, Pi, OpenCode, and Copilot CLI; other MCP-based agents use npx chisle mcp wrap. Read, Edit, and Write operations are deliberately left uncompressed so later edits retain exact file bytes. The benchmarks are also bounded workloads—26 Claude prompts and six Pi tasks—and the project publishes raw results, including unfavorable runs.

How engineers can use it

Preview the detected integrations first:

npx chisle --dry-run

Install it across supported agents:

npx chisle

To limit installation to one agent, the README documents options such as:

npx chisle --only claude
npx chisle --only pi

After installation, the rules apply automatically in new active sessions. Engineers can reactivate or disable them with /chisle and /chisle off. stop chisle disables both the ruleset and input-side compression, while normal mode deactivates the ruleset. Use npx chisle --help for available options and npx chisle --uninstall to restore the previous setup.

For MCP servers, add the separately documented wrapper:

npx chisle mcp wrap

The README points to docs/usage.md for per-agent configuration and INSTALL.md for MCP-specific setup.