Function getExploreOutputBudget

src/mcp/tools.ts:161–259

(fileCount: number)

}

export function getExploreOutputBudget(fileCount: number): ExploreOutputBudget {
  // Tiered budget, scaled to project size. The budget is a CEILING (relevance
  // still gates WHAT is included), and it MUST stay under the agent's INLINE
  // tool-result cap (~25K chars). Above that, the host externalizes the result
  // to a file the agent then Reads back — re-introducing a read AND the
  // cache-write cost — which is exactly what a 35K vscode explore did in the
  // n=4 README A/B. So even large repos cap at ~24K: the answer is the handful
  // of ~100-line flow windows the agent would have grep-located and read (it
  // natively reads ~6–9 files, median 100-line ranges), NOT a sprawl of 12
  // files. Concentration onto the flow emerges from this cap + the named-file-
  // first sort dropping peripheral files. Invariant: a larger tier must never
  // get a smaller `maxCharsPerFile` than a smaller tier.
  if (fileCount < 150) {
    return {
      // ITER3: revert iter2's aggressive body shrink (forced Read fallback —
      // the per-file 2.5K cap pushed the agent to Read instead of node).
      // Back to the iter1 shape (13K/4/3.8K) but keep the test-file
      // hard-exclude. The cost lever for this tier lives in steering the
      // agent to stop after 1-2 calls, not in this budget.
      maxOutputChars: 13000,
      defaultMaxFiles: 4,
      maxCharsPerFile: 3800,
      gapThreshold: 7,
      maxSymbolsInFileHeader: 5,
      maxEdgesPerRelationshipKind: 4,
      includeRelationships: false,
      includeAdditionalFiles: false,
      includeCompletenessSignal: false,
      includeBudgetNote: false,
      excludeLowValueFiles: true,
    };
  }
  if (fileCount < 500) {
    return {
      // ITER3: same revert/keep-filter pattern as <150.
      maxOutputChars: 18000,
      defaultMaxFiles: 5,
      maxCharsPerFile: 3800,
      gapThreshold: 8,
      maxSymbolsInFileHeader: 6,
      maxEdgesPerRelationshipKind: 6,
      includeRelationships: false,
      includeAdditionalFiles: false,
      includeCompletenessSignal: false,
      includeBudgetNote: false,
      excludeLowValueFiles: true,
    };
  }
  if (fileCount < 5000) {
    return {
      // ~150-line per-file window (the native read unit) × ~6 files, capped at
      // the ~24K inline ceiling so the response is never externalized. Per-file
      // stays ≥ the <500 tier (3800) — monotonic.
      maxOutputChars: 24000,
      defaultMaxFiles: 8,
      maxCharsPerFile: 6500,
      gapThreshold: 12,
      maxSymbolsInFileHeader: 10,