[copy to list]

A few years ago I wrote org-wc.el, which is on MELPA.  It uses overlays to display a word count against each heading.

Just install the package, and run org-wc-display.

https://github.com/tesujimath/org-wc

Hope that helps.

cheers,
Simon

On 22 August 2017 at 09:34, Jacopo De Simoi <wilderkde@gmail.com> wrote:
On Monday, August 21, 2017 2:09:25 PM EDT Eric S Fraga wrote:
> On Monday, 21 Aug 2017 at 13:21, Jacopo De Simoi wrote:
> > tl;dr
> >
> > Is there a way to create a token on a subtree header that would count
> > words in the subtree and [optionally] mark a maximum allowed number of
> > words?
> I cannot help you directly but what I do is: narrow the region to the
> sub-tree while writing and then simply execute M-x count-words RET every
> now and again.

this has the drawback that it also counts words in the header line; except
this, could work as a temporary solution, but I'd still like to cook up some
tag integrated with org

>
> There is a wc-mode which displays the number of words/chars in the
> modeline but my modeline is already too busy for this...

Indeed modelines are crowded these days…