context-mode Claims 98% Tool-Output Reduction — 315KB of MCP Output Down to 5.4KB — and Makes 'Think in Code' Mandatory Across 17 Clients

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mksglu/context-mode (19,893 stars, 1,430 forks, ELv2, pushed 2026-08-16) is an MCP server attacking context burn from four sides: sandboxing tool output so raw data never enters the window, tracking every file edit, git operation, task and error in SQLite and retrieving via FTS5/BM25 after compaction rather than re-dumping, enforcing routing across 17 agent platforms, and trimming model filler. Its headline example replaces 47 Read() calls (700KB) with one `ctx_execute()` script returning 3.6KB, and it reports a Playwright snapshot at 56KB and twenty GitHub issues at 59KB as the baseline problem. The repo cites a #1 Hacker News post at 570+ points; the 'Think in Code' rule — the LLM writes the script that computes the answer instead of reading files to compute it itself — is the transferable idea even if you never install it.