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:

• Did each agent produce unique findings?
• Was total token expenditure proportional to value?
• Did any agent duplicate another's work?
• 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