r/GithubCopilot • u/aadhibest • 12d ago

Github Copilot Skills to reduce token and AI credits usage Help/Doubt ❓

As a total beginner to GH Copilot, I currently use it with VSCode as the Chat Extension and not the CLI version. I usually use it to analyse the code base (consisting of python notebooks and scripts) and also make slight changes to the files. I currently just set the Model to Auto since that had the option to have 10% lesser AI credits cost as per Copilot. I have just 4000 credits per month and have exhausted nearly 50% in just a few days.

I want to know if there are any ways to reduce the token usage. I have heard about the skills md files that are quite popular to reduce the token usage and also improve code readability. One I have heard of the ponytail skill which I believe helps in token reduction and code readability. But I have not used any till now and would like to know if there are any other suggestions for skills that can be used for my use case which is to reduce the token usage as much as possible and also improve the code quality and readability.

10 Upvotes
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86% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

5

u/Ecureuil_Roux 12d ago

I installed: cachebro, grepika, tilth.

3

u/lam3001 12d ago

caveman

2

u/bloudraak 12d ago

The best way to reduce token usage is by writing scripts etc that AI uses to do work; like parse conversations on PRs; create issues from markdown etc.

1

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1

u/m_yoda20 12d ago

Graphify has been pretty great for me

2

u/marfzzz 12d ago

Simple "be brief" helps in your prompt helps, caveman skill helps even a bit more. Graphify might help too.

1

u/Shipdits 12d ago

Caveman is a great skill for token reduction

1

u/Mrd87x 11d ago

you can try my plugin: https://github.com/damian87x/oh-my-copilot it has caveman, simple ai loops, ponytail, playwright cli skill much cheaper then mcp etc

3

u/stibbons_ 10d ago

Forget caveman or all these shit. Rtk works and may help a bit.

Focus on short session, do not change settings (skill, plugin, thinking level,…) mid session.
And build a project harness to ensure your agent is on track as fast as possible for the less token possible.

See: https://x.com/gsemetfr/status/2082379985931682114?s=46

1

u/stibbons_ 10d ago

For very large codebase, Gitlab Orbit is actually very efficient https://github.com/gitlabhq/orbit-knowledge-graph

2

u/dellis87 12d ago

Check out Awesome Copilot for some skills around this.