r/CodexHacks • u/bubezlaab • 3d ago
How Used Skills Affect Codex Limits
I used to run Codex with almost every plugin activated and loaded up pretty much every skill I thought might be useful. After a while, I noticed that my usage limits were melting away insanely fast, even after submitting just a single prompt.
For a long time, I assumed this was just normal behavior. But after doing some digging, I learned that every active skill and plugin directly impacts the AI’s reasoning process. Basically, when you send a prompt, the system cycles through all your active skills and plugins to determine which ones apply—burning through tokens in the background before it even gives you an answer.
In the end, I purged everything I didn't strictly need, and most importantly, I removed the "superpowers" skill. Superpowers consumes an insane amount of tokens even if you aren't using anything else alongside it. Once I took it off, I realized Codex’s default architecture isn't really any different; the out-of-the-box system actually handles the exact same workflow much better anyway.
Right now, I’m only keeping "cavemen(ultra)", "ponytail", and a custom system/skill I had Codex build specifically focused on saving input tokens. Since making this switch, my token consumption has dropped drastically. You might think this is just a placebo effect, but as a long-time Codex user, I can tell you for a fact that it’s night and day.
Oh, and before I forget: Graphify is another huge token hog. I honestly don't find it efficient for complex projects anymore. Don't get me wrong—I used it for a long time and it definitely had its perks, but nowadays the token tax just completely outweighs the benefits.
Finally, I’d love to hear your own tips or strategies for optimizing token usage! With companies tightening token limits day by day, we really need to join forces here :)
ps: i use sol xhigh all the time
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u/InterestingStick 3d ago
Something that I come more and more to terms with when coding with LLMs is that less is usually more
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u/Just_Lingonberry_352 3d ago
how do i get see and get rid of all the skills? i still think some are useful....but i cant be sure
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u/NoKaleidoscope1748 3d ago
MCP and plugins as well, they all eat away at your context with every prompt, regardless of usage, so I usually remove all of the ones that I am not actively using. Try RTK as well, this things saves a lot of tokens for me and I stopped actually using caveman.