# LinkedIn Article

**Headline:** We built safety gates for Claude Code. Now we're giving them away.

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Claude Code is genuinely impressive. It can refactor a codebase, write tests, open pull requests, and keep pace with an experienced engineer. But left unguarded, it will also crawl your entire `node_modules` folder when it needs one import, commit an `.env` file because you forgot to mention it shouldn't, and burn through 85% of its context window before you realize you needed that budget for the hard part.

These are not hypothetical failures. They are patterns we observed across 300+ real development sessions while building GRIP, our internal AI agent management system. The problems are consistent, predictable, and entirely preventable.

So we built a gate layer to stop them. And after running it in production for months, we extracted the core of it into a standalone, free, open-source package: TokenGuard.

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What TokenGuard does

TokenGuard installs as a Claude Code hook layer. Every action Claude Code is about to take passes through 11 safety gates before it executes. If an action fails a gate, it is blocked, and Claude receives a clear explanation of why.

The gates cover three categories:

Efficiency gates block token waste before it compounds. If Claude tries to read node_modules, venv, .next, dist, or similar dependency directories, the read is stopped. If it reaches for a slow tool when a faster one is available, it is redirected. These alone can recover 20-30% of context on large projects.

Security gates catch the mistakes that happen when an AI moves fast and does not know your environment. Hard blocks on committing secrets, writing API keys into plan files, force-pushing to protected branches, and touching .github/workflows/ on PR branches where GitHub will silently suppress CI triggers.

Context gates give the session a budget. At 70% context consumption, Claude receives a warning. At 85%, it halts and surfaces options: compact the session, checkpoint, or push through with explicit approval. Context burnout mid-task is one of the most disruptive failure modes in AI-assisted development. TokenGuard makes it a managed event instead of a surprise.

Setup is a single command:

pip install tokenguard && tokenguard init

MIT licensed. Cross-platform. No configuration required to get started.

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TokenGuard vs GRIP

TokenGuard is the free, open-source foundation. GRIP is the full system.

TokenGuard (free):
- 11 safety gates
- Efficiency rules
- Session memory scaffold
- Project-aware configuration

GRIP (full):
- Everything in TokenGuard, plus:
- 100+ specialized skills
- 19 autonomous agents
- 26 operating modes (code, review, security, strategy, and more)
- Recursive self-improvement loops
- Adaptive context extension (1M tokens)
- Multi-session state persistence
- Team coordination and pair programming
- Sprint automation (issue to PR)
- PR review automation
- Custom skill and agent creation

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Why we are releasing this

The safety problems TokenGuard solves are not unique to our stack. Every team using Claude Code runs into some version of them. Keeping a proven solution internal when it costs us nothing to share it seemed like the wrong call.

There is also a practical reason: teams that adopt TokenGuard and find they need more -- multi-agent coordination, session continuity, custom gate logic, integration with their specific workflow -- know where to find us.

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Who this is for

TokenGuard is worth installing if your team is using Claude Code in any serious capacity. If you are a CTO evaluating Claude Code for production use, the security gates alone justify the ten-minute setup. If you are a tech lead watching engineers burn context on every session, the efficiency gates pay for themselves immediately.

If you need the full suite -- the agents, the skill library, the operating modes, the team configuration layer -- that is what ENTER Konsult delivers.

Start with the free layer. See what it catches. If you want the rest, visit enterkonsult.com.

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TokenGuard is open source and available now: pip install tokenguard

Built by ENTER Konsult -- technical delivery services for teams building with AI.
