frugal: save tokens, never save effort

The one rule decides every judgment call: the quality gate must not move. A "cheaper" run that fails the task, retries twice, or ships unverified work costs more than it saved. The KPI is successful task token cost: never raw token minimization.

Prerequisites

The task to economize plus its quality gate stated first (what must still pass after), and whatever usage signal exists (provider telemetry, or nothing: then savings start at unknown). No gate → define one before touching the workflow; optimizing an undefined task is just skipping work with extra steps.

Authority and operating modes