How I built a free tool that shows where Claude Code burns tokens

The problem Just saying "hi" to Claude Code costs ~31,000 tokens . I was paying $500+/month in API costs and had no idea where the tokens were going. So I built tokenwise — a free CLI that shows exactly where your AI coding agent wastes tokens. What it does tokenwise audit — Scan your instruction files It scans your CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, and rules files, then shows: How many tokens each file costs per message Boilerplate the AI already knows ("Always write clean code") ALL-CAPS emphasis that doesn't help (NEVER, ALWAYS, MUST) Duplicate sections Unscoped rules that load when they shouldn't tokenwise scan — Analyze your sessions It reads your latest session logs and shows: Token breakdown by component (system prompt, history, tool output) Cache hit rate Top 3 "token hogs" with actionable tips Monthly cost projection The key insight Most people try to compress context (which makes the AI dumber). tokenwise measures first, then applies safe fixes. You can't optimize what you can't measure. Quick start npx @davizin713/tokenwise audit npx @davizin713/tokenwise scan Zero API calls. Zero LLM inference. 100% local. Free forever. Works with 11 agents Claude Code, OpenCode, Cursor, Aider, Cline, Codex CLI, Goose, Continue.dev, Windsurf, Augment, and Kilocode. Links GitHub: github.com/davi713albano-coder/tokenwise npm: npmjs.com/package/@davizin713/tokenwise Built with TypeScript / Node.js js-tiktoken for token counting sql.js for reading OpenCode sessions MIT licensed If you use Claude Code or any AI coding agent, try it and let me know what you think! ⭐