Skip to content

docs: README — measured A/B for the savings claim + drop stale version line #27

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
ak2k merged 1 commit into from
May 20, 2026
Merged

docs: README — measured A/B for the savings claim + drop stale version line #27

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
1 commit
Select commit
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
19 changes: 15 additions & 4 deletions README.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@

Lightweight-delegation variant of [compound-engineering-plugin](https://github.com/EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin).

Drops the persistent agent registrations (~71k tokens of idle context savings, conditional on Claude Code loading agent bodies into the registration slot — see [the docstring](converter/generate_wrappers.py) for the measurement caveat) and dispatches every specialist via a single resolver shim instead. Specialist prompts move to `references/agent-prompts/`; the resolver (`bin/ce-lite-persona`) loads them on demand. Same coverage as upstream CE, near-zero idle cost, and a `UserPromptSubmit` hook restores proactive specialist invocation across all 49 personas.
Drops the persistent agent registrations (**measured: ~99.9k tokens of idle context, gone**) and dispatches every specialist via a single resolver shim instead. Specialist prompts move to `references/agent-prompts/`; the resolver (`bin/ce-lite-persona`) loads them on demand. Same coverage as upstream CE, near-zero idle cost, and a `UserPromptSubmit` hook restores proactive specialist invocation across all 49 personas.

## Install

Expand All @@ -11,13 +11,24 @@ Drops the persistent agent registrations (~71k tokens of idle context savings, c
/plugins install ce-lite@ce-lite
```

During trial, slash commands are namespaced under `/ce-lite:*` so the original `compound-engineering` plugin can be installed alongside for direct comparison. The current shipping version is `compound-engineering-v3.8.3-lite.3`; daily `upstream-watch.yml` auto-bumps as EveryInc releases.
During trial, slash commands are namespaced under `/ce-lite:*` so the original `compound-engineering` plugin can be installed alongside for direct comparison. Daily `upstream-watch.yml` auto-bumps the plugin as EveryInc tags new releases.

## Trade-offs vs. upstream CE

| | Upstream CE | ce-lite |
Measured against an interactive Claude Code session (Opus 4.7 1M-context, two isolated `CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR`s, identical state except the installed plugin):

| Context slot | Upstream CE | ce-lite | Δ |
|---|---:|---:|---:|
| **Total** | **192.5k** | **87.3k** | **−105.2k** |
| Custom agents | 99.9k (49 subagent registrations) | 0 (no registrations) | −99.9k |
| System tools | 35.5k | 22.3k | −13.2k |
| Skills | 4.6k | 12.5k | +7.9k |
| System prompt / MCP / memory / messages | 52.5k | 52.5k | 0 |

The ~99.9k of custom-agents context — Claude Code loads each registered subagent's full body for proactive selection — is the dominant savings. ce-lite trades a +7.9k skills bump (88 SKILL.md descriptions vs upstream's 29) for that.

| Behavior | Upstream CE | ce-lite |
|---|---|---|
| Idle context cost | ~77k tokens of agent bodies (49 registrations, if Claude Code loads bodies into the registration slot) | ~5,250 tokens (88 SKILL.md `description:` fields only); persona bodies lazy-loaded on dispatch |
| Specialist coverage | 49 personas | 49 personas (prompts moved to `references/agent-prompts/`, dispatched via `bin/ce-lite-persona`) |
| Proactive specialist invocation | ✅ Any conversation can pull `security-sentinel` via registered subagent | ✅ `UserPromptSubmit` hook keyword-matches every prompt against all 49 personas and injects suggestions (~70-84% activation per cited research, vs ~20% baseline for description-only routing) |
| Tool-restriction enforcement | Enforced by harness on registered subagent | Advisory only — dispatch via `general-purpose` subagent. See [caveat below](#caveat-tool-restrictions-are-advisory). |
Expand Down