What happened
Simon Willison shipped llm-echo 0.5, a debug plugin whose "echo" model involves no LLM at all and just repeats back prompts; it now simulates token usage including tool calls, system prompts and reasoning tokens.
Why it matters
Developers building against the LLM tool can test token accounting without billing real model calls, keeping prompt and reasoning overhead visible in the counts.
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llm-echo exists as a debugging aid rather than a real model: it echoes prompts back, so developers can inspect what the LLM tool is actually sending without paying for or waiting on a model call. The 0.5 release narrows a gap in that simulation. Version 0.5 now factors tool calls, system prompts and reasoning tokens into the simulated token counts, so the numbers it reports better reflect the inputs a real model would be charged for. Willison notes he revisited the plugin while testing PRs for an upcoming LLM release, which suggests the token-accounting change was driven by his own testing needs around that release.
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