log-context-mcp: MCP tool reduces log token usage by 96% for Claude debugging

log-context-mcp is an MCP (Model Context Protocol) tool built to address the problem of Claude Code burning tokens on verbose log files during debugging sessions. Instead of pasting raw log files that can consume 15k tokens on health checks and INFO spam, this tool preprocesses logs before they hit Claude's context.

How it works

The tool performs several preprocessing steps on log files:

• Deduplicates lines
• Groups stack traces
• Strips noise
• Produces a ~1000 token summary instead of the full log dump

Performance and testing

Testing on a 2000-line Apache log showed a 96.5% token reduction while still correctly identifying the root cause. The developer built this after repeatedly encountering the problem where Claude would burn 15k tokens on log files before finding the 3 lines that actually mattered.

Additional features

The tool includes an optional semantic layer that runs a cheap model (Gemma/Haiku/Ollama) on the compressed output for root cause analysis and error timelines. For users who don't want a separate API key, there's a /analyze-log skill that uses a Haiku sub-agent through your existing Claude subscription instead.

Related tools and development status

The developer discovered rtk (a similar tool for general-purpose CLI output compression) after building this log-specific solution. log-context-mcp is more focused on logs specifically, with the semantic analysis layer on top.

The tool is still in early development with plans to submit to the MCP marketplace for easier discovery and add more log format support. It's released under MIT license with setup instructions available on GitHub.

The developer is seeking feedback on what log formats and stacks users would want tested.