athola/agent-expenditure

Agent Token Waste Monitoring

When To Use

• After parallel agent dispatch completes
• When evaluating whether to increase agent count
• During retrospectives on agent-heavy workflows
• When plan-before-large-dispatch rule triggers

When NOT To Use

• Single-agent workflows (no coordination overhead)
• During active agent execution (post-hoc analysis)
• For token budgeting (use token-conservation instead)

Brooks's Law for Agents

Dispatching more agents does not always help. Coordination overhead grows with agent count:

| Agent Count | Expected Overhead | Guidance | |-------------|-------------------|----------| | 1-3 | Negligible | Dispatch freely | | 4-5 | 10-15% | Acceptable; plan first | | 6-8 | 20-30% | Monitor closely | | 9+ | 30%+ | Likely counterproductive |

Coordination overhead is measured as shared-file conflicts: concurrent Read/Write operations on the same file by different agents, as a percentage of total agent runtime.

Post-Dispatch Review Checklist

After parallel agent runs, evaluate:

1. Did each agent produce unique findings?
2. Was total token expenditure proportional to value?
3. Did any agent duplicate another's work?
4. Would fewer agents have produced the same result?

If 2+ questions answer no, reduce agent count in future dispatches of the same type.

Waste Signals

See modules/waste-signals.md for the 5 waste signal categories and detection criteria.

Cross-References

• .claude/rules/plan-before-large-dispatch.md for the 4+ agent planning requirement
• conserve:token-conservation for session-level token budgeting
• conjure:agent-teams for dispatch coordination

Exit Criteria

• [ ] All 4 post-dispatch review questions answered with explicit yes/no per agent (unique findings, proportional expenditure, no duplication, fewer agents sufficient)
• [ ] Waste signals from modules/waste-signals.md checked against the completed run; any triggered signal named with the category
• [ ] A recommendation is produced: either "reduce agent count to N" or "dispatch was efficient" with coordination overhead percentage
• [ ] If 2+ review questions answer no, a concrete agent-count reduction is stated for future dispatches of the same type