Dev's Token Usage Skyrockets 417x in Six Months, Yet Fewer Lines of Code
ChemicalExcellent463 · reddit · 2026-11-04
A Reddit developer shared how their AI coding usage has changed: 91 million tokens in April ballooned to 38 billion by October 28—a 417x increase, and that's just Claude Code and Codex on a single machine. Yet new lines of code over the same period actually dropped from 291,000 to 245,000. The key shift is in workflow: March and April marked the turning point—before, humans wrote code while AI reviewed and autocompleted; now agents do the work while humans handle exceptions. Markdown's share of new lines rose from about 25% early in the year to 41–51% after May. The author now directs agents through docs and research, while code quality is maintained through agents reviewing each other.
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