Stop Burning Tokens: 5 Golden Rules for Building Efficient AI Agents
iamKierraD · x · 2026-08-11
A developer shared five practical tips for using AI agents to avoid burning through your token budget in a matter of days:
- Observability before capability: Ensure you can monitor the agent's state before chasing powerful model capabilities.
- Frontier models for reasoning: Use the most advanced models for complex logic and reasoning tasks.
- Cheap models for daily driving: Rely on low-cost models for routine, high-frequency simple tasks.
- Agents have 1 task: Keep agent responsibilities singular to avoid functional overload.
- Skills have failure modes: Anticipate and handle potential errors in specific skills.
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