High Token Usage Masks Poor Unit Economics of Agents

gerardsans · x · 2026-08-23

Critiquing the high token consumption in agent systems, the author argues it serves as a vanity metric. Using 100M tokens instead of 1M makes the business look better by showing high demand and justifying massive compute investments. However, this often hides terrible unit economics, running 100x agents for tasks that don't need them.

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