May 23, 2026saving

Saving 60-90% on AI coding tokens with one CLI tool — rtk

Saving 60-90% on AI coding tokens with one CLI tool — rtk — explore insights on saving, coding and more.

savingcodingtokensoneclitoolclaudecodexcopilot

Been using Claude Code heavily for some of our projects and the token costs add up fast. Found rtk (Rust Token Killer) this week — it sits as a hook between your IDE and the shell, filtering noise out of command output before it hits the model context.

What it does:

  • Intercepts git status, grep, ls and strips irrelevant output before the AI sees it

  • Tracks savings so you can actually measure the difference

  • Zero impact on results — the AI still gets what it needs, just less noise

Setup in 2 minutes:

bash# Install
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rtk-ai/rtk/master/install.sh | sh
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc

# Configure
rtk config --create

Wire it up:

Claude Code — add to ~/.claude/settings.json:

json"hooks": { "PreToolUse": [{ "matcher": "Bash",
  "hooks": [{ "type": "command", "command": "rtk hook claude" }]
}]}

Cursor / Codex — run once:

bashrtk init -g

Then check your savings:

bashrtk gain

Small tool, real impact. Worth the 2 minutes if you're running AI agents on any serious codebase.

Reference : https://www.rtk-ai.app/docs/getting-started/configuration/

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