token-budget-gate — Pre-Task Token Cost Gate

Multi-step and multi-agent tasks can silently consume large token budgets. This skill estimates cost before execution, outputs a gate verdict, and calibrates estimates against actual usage after completion — preventing surprise overruns without blocking legitimate work.

FH context: FH default execution tier is standard (~15K tokens). This skill gates against accidental full (~30K) or max (~60K+) consumption on tasks that could be handled lighter.

Triggers

• /token-budget-gate
• "token budget", "token cost", "how expensive", "will this use a lot of tokens"
• "estimate tokens", "token estimate before we start"
• Before invoking: agent-composer, sim-conductor, steel-quench (max-tier skills)
• Automatically proposed when task description contains: multi-agent, parallel dispatch, full suite, all files, entire codebase

Gate Thresholds (defaults — user-configurable)