Cheap Ag

Cheap Agent

  Your frontier model is a principal engineer. Stop paying it to type.

  Same feature. Same prompt. 63% fewer Opus tokens.
  Your Claude or ChatGPT plan lasts longer. Your code still ships with tests.

  ⭐ Star it, and click Watch → Custom → Releases to hear when new versions ship.
  💬 Questions, ideas and setups: r/CheapAgent

Install

Works in Claude Code and Codex. One login covers both.

Let agent install

Copy this into Claude Code or Codex and let the agent take it from there. It asks what you want, sets things up, and gives you one command to run yourself, where you type your API key.

Claude Code

Pick a provider (OpenRouter if unsure), press Enter for the recommended models, paste your API key. It checks the key works, then adds itself to Claude Code for every project.

Then, in each project, once:

That's it. Ask Claude for changes like you always do.

Codex

Log in (say no when it offers to add itself to Claude Code, if you don't use Claude):

Add the plugin:

Start codex in your project and trust the 3 cheapag hooks when it asks. Then, in each project, once:

That's it. Ask Codex for changes like you always do.

You need

- Claude Code or Codex
- Node.js 20+
- An API key with a few dollars on it from one of the supported providers, or a local model with no key at all. A few dollars lasts hundreds of tasks.

It runs on macOS, Linux and Windows.

Windows: you also need Git for Windows (Git Bash). Known so far:
- The very first job can take about 2 minutes while the cheap model's engine (OpenCode) sets itself up. Later jobs start in seconds.
- If that engine crashes mid-session, Cheap Agent starts a new one, but the crashed copy can stay running (opencode.exe in Task Manager) until you end it or restart.
- The cheap model can't read your…