Minimal Context Tools Plugin

A curated collection of efficient CLI tools and workflows optimized for minimal context usage and one-shot patterns with LLMs.

Philosophy

The context window is a shared resource. These skills are designed to:

Get files, lines, and context in a single call — no iterations
Save 90%+ context vs reading entire files
Compose tools together: discover → filter → view → transform

Skills

Core Skills

analyzing-code-structure — Structural code search and refactoring, formatting-independent (ast-grep)
viewing-files — Enhanced file viewer with syntax highlighting (bat)
extracting-code-structure — Extract code structure without reading full files (ast-grep, ctags, language analyzers)
finding-files — Fast file discovery with parallel search (fd)
fuzzy-selecting — Interactive fuzzy finder for any list (fzf)

Data Processing Skills

querying-json — JSON data extraction and manipulation (jq)
querying-yaml — YAML data extraction and manipulation (yq)

Text Processing Skills

searching-text — Fast text search with one-shot patterns (rg)
replacing-text — Intuitive find & replace with JavaScript regex (sd)

Analysis Skills

analyzing-code — Code statistics analysis by language (tokei)

Setup Skills

setup-snip-hooks — Scaffolds snip preToolUse hooks into a project's .github/hooks/ directory

Common Workflows

# Code analysis pipeline (minimal context)
extracting-code-structure → searching-text → analyzing-code-structure → viewing-files

# Interactive file search and edit
fd -e py | fzf --preview="bat --color=always {}" | xargs vim

# Configuration management
finding-files → querying-json/querying-yaml → fuzzy-selecting → replacing-text

# Statistics-driven refactoring
analyzing-code → finding-files → searching-text → analyzing-code-structure → analyzing-code

Installation

macOS (Homebrew)

brew install ast-grep bat fd fzf jq ripgrep sd tokei yq

# snip — token filter proxy for LLM sessions
brew install edouard-claude/tap/snip

Windows

Winget

winget install sharkdp.bat sharkdp.fd junegunn.fzf jqlang.jq BurntSushi.ripgrep.MSVC mike-farah.yq
cargo install ast-grep sd tokei

Chocolatey

choco install bat fd fzf jq ripgrep yq

Cargo (for tools not available in package managers)

cargo install ast-grep sd tokei

snip (token filter proxy)

go install github.com/edouard-claude/snip/cmd/snip@latest

Snip Hook

The setup-snip-hooks skill scaffolds a ready-to-use PreToolUse hook into a project's .github/hooks/ directory. It transparently rewrites supported commands through snip before they reach the LLM context.

Why a skill instead of a bundled hook?

Copilot plugins currently cannot ship functional hooks directly. Hooks require a hardcoded cwd in hooks.json — there is no dynamic variable (like ${PLUGIN_ROOT}) to resolve the hook script path at runtime. Because the path must be relative to the project root, the hook files must live inside each target project.

This means a plugin cannot register a hook once for all workspaces; it has to be copied into every project that needs it. The setup-snip-hooks skill automates this scaffolding step.

Future evolution: If Copilot/VS Code adds support for dynamic path resolution in hooks.json (e.g. environment variables or plugin-relative paths), this skill could be replaced by a hook shipped directly within the plugin — no per-project scaffolding needed.

The hook intercepts: git, go, cargo, npm, npx, yarn, pnpm, docker, kubectl, make, pip, pytest, jest, tsc, eslint, rustc.

On macOS, if Gatekeeper blocks snip after Homebrew install:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine $(which snip)

Quick Start

Use extracting-code-structure (ast-grep/ctags) to get an overview before reading full files
Use searching-text (rg) for one-shot text search with context lines
Use analyzing-code-structure (ast-grep) for structural refactoring (avoids "old_string not unique")
Chain with fuzzy-selecting (fzf) for interactive selection and viewing-files (bat) for preview

Credits

This plugin was inspired by and built upon the excellent work of @iota9star in my-skills.

Copilot Instructions