tkst

Track and budget Claude Code token spending from the command line

TLDR

Create a task with a budget cap

$ tkst -t "[Issue-243]" -b [5]

Launch Claude Code with cost tracking enabled

$ tkst claude

List all tasks and their current spending

$ tkst -l

Update a task's budget or name

$ tkst -u "[Issue-243]" -b [10]

Delete a task

$ tkst -d "[Issue-243]"

Reallocate spend from one task to another

$ tkst -ra "[old-task]" "[new-task]"

Toggle tracking on or off

$ tkst --enable``` or ```tkst --disable

SYNOPSIS

tkst [options] [claude [claude-args]]

tkst (Tokenyst) is a small CLI that wraps the claude command and keeps a running ledger of token usage, computed dollar cost, and budget consumption per task. After each prompt during a session it prints a per-turn delta and the cumulative spend against the active budget, so you can stop before exceeding a cap. Tasks are user-defined buckets — typically one per ticket, feature, or experiment — that hold a budget, a list of recorded sessions, and an aggregated total.All state is stored locally under ~/.tokenyst with no cloud sync. Pricing for the supported Claude model variants is bundled with the binary and applied to the token counts reported by the claude CLI.

PARAMETERS

claude [args]

Launch the Claude CLI under tracking. Arguments after claude are forwarded verbatim.

-t name, --task name

Create a new task with the given name.

-b amount, --budget amount

Set the budget cap (USD) for the task, used with -t or -u.

-l, --list

List every task with its budget, total spend, and recent sessions.

-u name, --update name

Update an existing task; combine with -b to change the budget or --rename to change the name.

-d name, --delete name

Delete the named task.

-a, --allocations

Show per-session and per-task spend allocations.

-ra from to, --reallocate from to

Move recorded spend from one task to another (useful after misattributed sessions).

--enable

Re-enable tracking after it was disabled.

--disable

Suspend tracking; the claude wrapper still passes calls through.

CONFIGURATION

~/.tokenyst/

Local data directory holding the tasks, session logs, and computed totals.

~/.tokenyst/config.json

User-tunable settings such as default model pricing and currency.

CAVEATS

Cost figures depend on the bundled price list; if Anthropic changes pricing the values are estimates until the binary is updated. Token counts are read from the claude CLI output, so changes to that interface can disrupt tracking. State lives locally and is not synchronised between machines — pair with version control or a synced home directory if you want shared budgets.

HISTORY

Tokenyst was published by jher7 in 2026 in response to the proliferation of multi-agent Claude Code workflows, where per-prompt spend was previously invisible until end-of-month billing. It is distributed as an npm/pnpm package installed globally and invoked as tkst.