Tokenomics: Quantifying Where Tokens Are Used in Agentic Software Engineering

Tokenomics: Quantifying Where Tokens Are Used in Agentic Software Engineering(arxiv.org)

52 points by Anon84 3 hours ago | 10 comments

Reminded me of this paper from last year trying to optimize efficient token usage providing budget guidance information. [1]

[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Stee...

sakuraiben 1 hour ago |

One thing I've noticed using agents for coding is that they really like to write thousands of unit tests but not dynamically test.

drivebyhooting 1 hour ago | |

And they like to burn a ton of tokens writing and debugging tests that are semantically corrupt.

gib444 56 minutes ago | |

And AWS heavily pushes a complex lambda solution stringing together as many chargeable AWS services as possible for a simple requirement

Their interests are often not your interests. In this case they want you to unnecessary money on useless work (let's stop the euphemism of "tokens" btw)

make3 1 hour ago | |

you can just tell them to do more dynamic testing. I think dynamic testing is partly frowned upon because it slows things down & can take down software where you wouldn't expect

drivebyhooting 1 hour ago |

In the past Google et al would hire engineers based on how well they could optimize the infrastructure.

Maybe soon companies will look at how engineers can optimize the token efficiency of AI.

Retric 1 hour ago | |

That assumes Tokens will remain a meaningful expense. I’m not sure developers will find uses for ever more tokens nearly as quickly as the prices fall.

satvikpendem 44 minutes ago |

Tokenomics is already a word used to describe cryptocurrency economics, not sure why they'd try to redefine it for AI even if a different sort of token is used.

NewJazz 25 minutes ago | |

New fad. Forget about the old fad. This one will be old soon, you better get on board before its too late!

senectus1 28 minutes ago |

amusing side note:

Was in a meeting reviewing a potential new product, it was going well until they showed us that they had added AI to it (of course they have). It was pretty obviously just shoehorned in, and one part of that obviousness was that they had a column that showed how many tokens it took to make each query.

I asked who is paying for the tokens, they said its included in the license. I said, so is there a budget or is it all you can eat. they said good question they didnt know and would get back to me. I said the reason i asked was just one query there had a 250k token burn on it. and it was a fairly simple query about one device.

then, one of the execs on their side was heard saying out loud "Why are we even showing this to the customers?"

it have us quite a chuckle. But lesson learned... the cost of adding AI to anything isnt really being accounted for let alone the true cost of actually running the AI.

all things AI are going to get more expensive. even if you dont want the AI aspect.