My agent is too damn expensive! What do you wish you knew about your LLM token burn?
Summary
A discussion post about the high costs of running LLM agents, with users sharing frustrations and seeking advice on tracking token spending and improving efficiency.
Similar Articles
What I'm Finding About LLM Code Style and Token Costs
The article discusses how LLM code style choices affect token consumption and costs, offering optimizations such as using Web API standards and simpler indentation to reduce output tokens.
Subagents Account for Most Token Costs in Long Agent Runs: Fixes That Cut Usage 70 to 90 Percent in Practice
The article analyzes a 2026 paper by Bai et al. showing that subagents and context bloat cause token costs in long agent runs to be ~1000x higher than chat, and presents three practical fixes (PLAN.md, read budget, out-of-band notes) that reduce token usage by 70-90%.
Cutting LLM Token Costs with rtk, headroom, and caveman - savings measured on real workloads
A detailed analysis of three open-source tools (rtk, headroom, and caveman) designed to reduce LLM token costs for coding agents, finding that real-world savings are much lower than claimed.
10 Ways To Reduce Your LLM API Costs
A practical guide listing 10 strategies to reduce costs when using LLM APIs, including model selection, prompt caching, batch processing, and monitoring expenses.
Local LLM Peeps
A developer with 45 years of experience is building a local-first harness for LLMs with multi-agent logic, soon to be open-sourced on GitHub, and asks the community what features would improve their local LLM experience.