---
description: Show or set the budget mode - how hard the plugin leans, and what it costs to say it
---

Run `node "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/usage-limits/scripts/mode.js" $ARGUMENTS`
and report the answer back. Then stop; do not start other work as part of this
command.

If the user just wants it gone: `off` injects nothing at all, `off --guard 95`
stays silent until 95 per cent. Say which you ran.

The plugin is not free. It puts a line into your context before every prompt,
refreshes readings after tool calls, and keeps a status line alive. A mode
changes two things at once: what the plugin tells you to do, and what it costs
to say it.

| mode | what it is |
| --- | --- |
| `max` | fewest tokens that can still finish the job: one terse line, readings every ten minutes, silent when nothing a decision depends on has moved |
| `high` | full capability, re-costed every two minutes mid-turn: the normal line plus a directive to keep checking whether the tier is bigger than the task. The mid-turn re-cost is re-measured on that cadence and said only when the answer changes |
| `standard` | what the plugin does today, unchanged |
| `off` | nothing is injected at all, and every hook returns before reading anything - including the end-of-reply cost line and the closing line |

Aliases: `ultra`, `ultra-efficient`, `maxefficient` and friends for `max`;
`smart`, `high-efficient` for `high`; `efficient`, `token-efficient`,
`default`, `on` for `standard`; `none`, `quiet`, `silent`, `ignore` for `off`.

**`normal` is deliberately not an alias for either `standard` or `off`.** To
some people it means "the plugin working as usual" and to others "the plugin
stays out of the way", and those are opposite instructions. The script answers
it with a question. Ask which was meant; never guess.

Commands:

- (no arguments) - the current mode, where it came from, and what it changes.
- `<name>` - set it. `<name> --session --session-id <id>` sets it for one
  session only.
- `auto` / `auto off` - pick from pressure. Under 50 per cent used it is
  standard, 50 to 79 high, 80 or over (or tight, or gone) max. It is always
  reported as what it resolved to (`auto -> max`) and it never picks `off`.
- `off --guard 95` - off, except one short line when the window is nearly
  spent. `off` on its own is silent even at 100 per cent; that is what it means
  and it is honoured literally, so the guard exists and is offered once.
- `--list`, `--explain <name>` - the modes, and one mode's full record.
- `--floor sonnet/medium`, `--ceiling opus/xhigh`, `--pin` - the user's own
  bounds on what the plugin may suggest. `--pin` means report only: the gap
  between the baseline and what is running is stated and nothing is suggested.
- `--baseline` - the user's own setting and the tier actually running, side by
  side.
- `--advice` / `--no-advice` / `--advice-on` - the recommendation channel.
- `--decline [id]` - the user said no. That recommendation is remembered as
  declined and is never raised again, in this session or any later one. With no
  id it declines whatever is pending.
- `--history`, `undo` - what changed, when, at whose instruction; and reverse
  the last one, naming it first.
- `--ledger` - measured turns and cost per turn, per mode, from what replies
  actually cost.
- `--low-priority` / `--low-priority on` / `--low-priority off` - whether YOU
  have switched Claude Code's `/low-priority` on. With no argument it reports
  what is recorded, whether this account is provisioned for the command at all,
  whether Claude Code will inject its own wrap-up note at the wall on this
  machine, and whether the CLI's own continue-after-reset is on.

  **This is a record of something the user did, never a reading.** Claude Code
  keeps the live low-priority state in process memory and writes it to no file:
  not `~/.claude.json`, not `~/.claude/state`, and no hook payload or
  status-line field carries it. So the plugin knows three things and not a
  fourth - the account is provisioned (`tengu_toasty_breeze.enabled`), the user
  has said it is on, or neither. It never claims it is running.

  `on` changes three behaviours: the brief brakes on the **weekly** window
  instead of the 5-hour one, it stops telling you to wind down at the 5-hour
  wall, and the relay will not book a wake for the 5-hour reset - that reset is
  no longer a wall this session stops at. The record lapses on its own when the
  5-hour window it was made against resets, because that is when low-priority
  ends. Say `off` if it ends sooner.

  The model cannot type a slash command, and `/low-priority` is declared
  `supportsNonInteractive: false`, so it is also unusable in a headless or
  relayed run. Nothing here can switch it on.

Two rules that hold in every mode:

1. **The modes govern the agent plane only.** `settings.json`, `/effort`,
   `/model` and `lowpower.js` are the user's own baseline. The plugin reads
   them, shows them, and never writes them on its own initiative. Recommend a
   change freely; make one when asked; never make one unasked.
2. **A mode never lowers the quality of the work.** The savings come from
   ceremony - speculative reads, re-reads, preamble, subagents nobody needed -
   and never from doing the job less well.