RTK plus Headroom can cut coding-agent token bills by roughly 80%.

They work at different layers. RTK sits between the agent and the shell, compressing per-command output 60-90% across 100-plus commands. Headroom sits as a local API proxy compressing everything bound for the model: JSON, AST-aware code, logs, RAG results, conversation history. Run both and you strip noise at the source and again before the API call. Given the GitHub-load and AI-COGS stories above, token discipline isn't optional anymore. (Andrew Patterson)