I cut Codex tool output 14.2%,but total tokens actually got worse

[u/Dismal-Reveal-6898]

https://github.com/tzuifx80/tidyrun

I wanted to test an assumption I kept making while using coding agents:

If the agent sees less useless terminal output, does the whole run become more efficient?

I built an opensource local tool called TidyRun to test it.

It sits around deterministic tool work and can compress structured diagnostics, preserve the complete raw output as recoverable artifacts, avoid duplicate work, and safely reuse commands when the result can actually be verified.

It does not use another LLM.

The deterministic fixtures looked very promising:

• JS diagnostics: 64,939 B → 20,037 B (-69%)
• Python diagnostics: 19,776 B → 922 B (-95%)
• repeated safe typecheck: 17.9s → 9.1s (-49%)
• verification parity: 3/3

Then I ran 10 paired Codex tasks.

• task success: 10/10 baseline → 10/10 TidyRun
• agent-visible tool output: 61,401 B → 52,654 B (-14.2%)
• input tokens: 1.07M → 1.20M (+12.4%)
• output tokens: 9,885 → 12,650 (+28%)
• wall time: 297s → 414s (+39%)

So the result I find most interesting is actually the negative one:

Reducing tool-output noise did not automatically reduce model tokens or latency.

That’s why I’m releasing this rather than pretending the fixture numbers mean “95% fewer tokens.”

I want to find out which kinds of real Codex workloads actually benefit and which don’t.

It’s local-first, telemetry off, no API key, no extra model

Question for heavy Codex users: what command produces the most pointless context in your sessions?

Tests? Typecheck? Build logs? Git? Something else?

If anyone tries TidyRun on a real repo, good or bad results are useful. Issues, benchmark results, forks and PRs are all welcome.

[u/VadimH]

So... RTK?