Cost Optimizer Agent Skill
Tracks cumulative LLM costs across DAG execution and makes real-time decisions to stay within budget. Downgrades models, skips optional nodes, or stops early when cost exceeds thresholds. Use when managing execution budgets, analyzing cost breakdowns, or optimizing model routing for cost. Activate on "cost budget", "too expensive", "reduce cost", "cost optimization", "model downgrade", "budget exceeded". NOT for LLM model selection logic (use llm-router), pricing comparisons across providers, or billing/invoicing.
Install
one command, takes just this skill from the repositorynpx skills add https://github.com/curiositech/some_claude_skills --skill cost-optimizerThe instruction itself
10 sections, as written by the authorCost Optimizer
Tracks cumulative LLM costs across DAG execution and makes real-time decisions to stay within budget: downgrade models, skip optional nodes, or stop early.
When to Use
✅ Use for:
- Setting and enforcing cost budgets for DAG executions
- Real-time cost monitoring during execution
- Deciding when to downgrade model tiers mid-execution
- Identifying which nodes are most expensive and why
- Post-execution cost analysis and optimization recommendations
❌ NOT for:
- Choosing which model to use per node (use
llm-router) - Provider pricing comparisons (static data, not a skill)
- Billing or invoicing features
Budget Enforcement Process
flowchart TD
N[Node about to execute] --> C[Check: spent + estimated_node_cost vs budget]
C --> S{Within budget?}
S -->|Yes, >20% remaining| E[Execute at planned model tier]
S -->|Yes, <20% remaining| W[Execute but downgrade to Tier 1 if possible]
S -->|No| D{Node optional?}
D -->|Yes| SK[Skip node]
D -->|No| H{Human gate available?}
H -->|Yes| A[Ask human: continue over budget?]
H -->|No| ST[Stop execution, return partial results]
Budget Tiers
| Budget Remaining | Action |
|-----------------|--------|
| >50% | Execute at planned model tier |
| 20-50% | Log warning. Continue at planned tier. |
| 10-20% | Downgrade remaining Tier 2 nodes to Tier 1 (Haiku) |
| 5-10% | Downgrade ALL remaining nodes to Tier 1. Skip optional nodes. |
| <5% | Stop execution unless next node is critical path |
| 0% | Stop. Return partial results with cost breakdown. |
Cost Estimation Per Node
Before each node executes, estimate its cost:
estimated_cost = (avg_input_tokens × input_price + avg_output_tokens × output_price)
Use historical averages for this skill + model combination. If no history, use defaults:
- Tier 1 (Haiku): ~800 input + 400 output = ~$0.001
- Tier 2 (Sonnet): ~2000 input + 1000 output = ~$0.012
- Tier 3 (Opus): ~3000 input + 1500 output = ~$0.16
Post-Execution Report
cost_report:
total_budget: 0.50
total_spent: 0.37
budget_remaining: 0.13
nodes_executed: 8
nodes_skipped: 1
nodes_downgraded: 2
model_breakdown:
haiku: { calls: 4, cost: 0.004 }
sonnet: { calls: 3, cost: 0.036 }
opus: { calls: 1, cost: 0.33 }
savings_recommendations:
- "Node 'deep-analysis' used Opus ($0.33) but downstream accepted on first try. Try Sonnet next time — potential saving: $0.32"
- "Nodes 'validate-a' and 'validate-b' are sequential but independent. Parallelize to reduce wall-clock time."
Anti-Patterns
No Budget at All
Wrong: Running DAGs without any cost tracking until the API bill arrives.
Right: Every DAG execution has a budget, even if generous. Track spend per node.
Aggressive Downgrading
Wrong: Downgrading Opus nodes to Haiku at 50% budget remaining, causing quality failures that trigger expensive retries.
Right: Only downgrade when the alternative is stopping execution. Retries cost more than the original model tier.
Ignoring Retries in Cost
Wrong: Budgeting for one attempt per node.
Right: Budget for avg_retries × cost_per_attempt. A node with 3 retries on Sonnet costs $0.036, not $0.012.
Other skills for the same job
different authors, same section of the catalogue
Create SEO-optimized marketing content with consistent brand voice. Includes brand voice analyzer, SEO optimizer, content frameworks, and social media templates. Use when writing blog posts, creating social media content, analyzing brand voice, optimizing SEO, planning content calendars, or when user mentions content creation, brand voice, SEO optimization, social media marketing, or content strategy.
Creates comprehensive content outlines and topic clusters for SEO. Plans content calendars and identifies topic gaps. Use PROACTIVELY for content strategy and planning.
Handle mental health crisis situations in AI coaching safely. Use when implementing crisis detection, safety protocols, emergency escalation, or suicide prevention features. Activates for crisis keywords, safety planning, hotline integration, and risk assessment.
When the user wants help creating, scheduling, or optimizing social media content for LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or other platforms. Also use when the user mentions 'LinkedIn post,' 'Twitter thread,' 'social media,' 'content calendar,' 'social scheduling,' 'engagement,' or 'viral content.' This skill covers content creation, repurposing, and platform-specific strategies.
Build and scale partner ecosystems that drive revenue and platform adoption. Use when building partner programs from scratch, tiering partnerships, managing co-marketing, making build-vs-partner decisions, or structuring crawl-walk-run partner deployment.
Brainstorm 3-5 monetization strategies with audience fit, risks, and validation experiments. Use when exploring revenue models, evaluating pricing strategies, or deciding how to monetize a product.
Brainstorm product positioning ideas differentiated from competitors. Identifies top competitors and generates positioning statements with rationale. Use when developing product positioning, differentiating from competitors, or crafting brand positioning strategy.
Generate a full campaign brief with objectives, audience, messaging, channel strategy, content calendar, and success metrics. Use when planning a product launch, lead-gen push, or awareness campaign, when you need a week-by-week content calendar with dependencies, or when translating a marketing goal into a structured, executable plan.
How to use it
Take curiositech/cost-optimizer from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal
use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.
The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the
same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.