Token Burn

Burn is not proof. Output is not victory. Accepted work that repeats is leverage.

today · in flight

0 active

13 sessions · spend 0 · Claude Code 0
by project: <home> 0
top session 01439347 (<home>, 0, —)

2026-08-21
as of 2026-08-21T13:00:33Z

Stupid button · 29m ago · gemma4:e4b · 3656t in / 721t out · 122.7s

Trend vs last week

Waste is UP 20.8M (385.7%) vs last week (5.4M → 26.2M).
Unsettled is DOWN 15.8M (-94.1%) vs last week (16.7M → 0.9M).

What worked

pal: 4.6M accepted_active_h.
pal/dashboards: 1.7M accepted_active_h.
las: 1.4M accepted_active_h.

What wasted tokens

The <home> project shows an acceptance_ratio of 0.0, with 26.1M waste_active_h. This is unmeasurable—ran outside any git repo, so 0.0 is the meter failing to see the work, not a judgement on it.
The pal project has an acceptance_ratio of 0.842, but 0 waste_active_h.
The memory project has an acceptance_ratio of 0.991, but 0 waste_active_h.

Why the big number is big

A subagent spawn forks its parent, so the child starts holding the parent's whole transcript and the same conversation is charged once per fork, on every turn. The root 019fee2e-1781 involved 13 threads and 12 forks, reached a max_depth of 2, and charged 579.6M. The agents involved were Averroes, Copernicus, Faraday, Galileo, Halley, and Hooke.

What needs a verdict

pal + 5af22ad7 + 2026-08-20 + pal: not_useful. (open_loop, 476K burn — small miss)
pal + 83ba2858 + 2026-08-17 + pal: not_useful. (open_loop, 388K burn — small miss)
panacea-ai + 83ba2858 + 2026-08-16 + panacea-ai: not_useful. (open_loop, 53K burn — small miss)
dreamweaver + 83ba2858 + 2026-08-16 + dreamweaver: not_useful. (open_loop, 41K burn — small miss)
dreamweaver + 5af22ad7 + 2026-08-19 + dreamweaver: not_useful. (open_loop, 25K burn — small miss)
memory + 83ba2858 + 2026-08-15 + /home/khoward/.claude/projects/-home-khoward/memory: not_useful. (open_loop, 6K burn — small miss)

One contrarian observation

The <home> project has a massive waste_active_h of "26.1M" but an acceptance_ratio of 0.0, which is noted as unmeasurable.

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Measurability caveat (generated, not model-authored): <home> (26.1M) ran outside any git repo. There is no diff to credit, so a 0.0 acceptance ratio there is the meter failing to see the work — not a judgement on it. Only ratios on measurable: true projects are verdicts.

Rollups — acceptance lane

Headline is accepted tokens (active lane, manual label wins over git auto-classification). Unsettled = committed-not-merged + open-loop. "Active" excludes cache replay; "spend" includes it.

Last 7 days

8.7M accepted

unsettled 988K · acceptance 24%

spend 913.9M · 174 sessions · Codex 23.6M / Claude Code 12.3M

Last 30 days

12.4M accepted

unsettled 182.1M · acceptance 5%

spend 9.68B · 687 sessions · Claude Code 161.0M / Codex 65.2M

Last 90 days

12.4M accepted

unsettled 291.2M · acceptance 4%

spend 11.98B · 817 sessions · Claude Code 219.8M / Codex 115.5M

Daily heatmap — last 60 days

Each cell = one UTC day, color intensity = log10(active tokens). Hover for date + counts.

LessMore· log-scale, exact lane

Top 10 days

Date	Active	Spend	Sessions	Top project	Outcomes
2026-07-28	34.5M	1.78B	47	<home> (29.6M)	?=50
2026-08-01	24.5M	1.57B	10	payday (6.1M)	?=20
2026-07-16	23.3M	797.0M	24	<home> (16.3M)	?=27
2026-07-31	23.1M	2.10B	9	payday (8.1M)	?=34
2026-08-18	22.3M	554.5M	38	<home> (21.6M)	no_repo=38 · accepted=5 · PRs #27
2026-07-21	20.7M	436.0M	4	<home> (9.8M)	?=9
2026-07-30	19.4M	645.3M	26	payday (16.5M)	?=31
2026-08-06	16.5M	592.1M	51	<home> (12.0M)	?=58
2026-07-29	11.2M	118.2M	25	payday (10.8M)	?=27
2026-07-24	10.8M	403.2M	26	las (5.9M)	?=28

By project — last 7 days

Project	Active
<home>	26.1M
pal	5.5M
pal/dashboards	1.7M
las	1.4M
memory	612K
pal/templari	427K
tmp	80K
dreamweaver	66K
.claude	60K
panacea-ai	53K
hooks	25K
18	18K

By outcome — last 7 days

accepted 14 #32 (MERGED), #16 (MERGED), #27 (MERGED), #26 (MERGED)

open_loop 6

no_repo 184

Effectiveness — last 30 days

Where delegated work shipped (top) vs. where high burn never crossed an acceptance line (bottom). Bars: accepted · unsettled · waste. Normalized to the widest project in window.

Leverage — most accepted

Project	Accepted	Ratio
pal	5.1M	67%
dreamweaver	3.0M	9%
pal/dashboards	1.7M	100%
las	1.4M	14%
memory	825K	54%
pal/templari	427K	100%

Waste candidates — lowest acceptance ratio (≥100K active)

Project	Accepted	Ratio	Mix
<home>	0	0%
payday	0	0%
panacea-ai	0	0%
pal/placeholders	0	0%
workshopping	0	0%
command-center	0	0%

Needs validation — last 14 days (12 unsettled)

Sessions where auto-classification couldn't tell shipped work from waste. Highest-burn first. Manually label these with `label: "used"|"partial"|"redo"|"review"|"not_useful"` in token_burn.jsonl to override the auto verdict.

Date	Project	Session	Active	Auto	cwd
2026-08-12	dreamweaver	d476d902	6.5M	open_loop	.../dreamweaver/.worktrees/deploy-main
2026-08-09	dreamweaver	d476d902	3.4M	open_loop	.../dreamweaver
2026-08-14	dreamweaver	d476d902	2.2M	open_loop	.../dreamweaver/.worktrees/deploy-main
2026-08-10	pal/placeholders	d476d902	1.8M	open_loop	.../pal/placeholders
2026-08-10	dreamweaver	d476d902	1.6M	open_loop	.../dreamweaver
2026-08-12	pal/placeholders	d476d902	1.2M	open_loop	.../pal/placeholders
2026-08-20	pal	5af22ad7	476K	open_loop	.../pal
2026-08-17	pal	83ba2858	388K	open_loop	.../pal
2026-08-16	panacea-ai	83ba2858	53K	open_loop	.../panacea-ai
2026-08-16	dreamweaver	83ba2858	41K	open_loop	.../dreamweaver
2026-08-19	dreamweaver	5af22ad7	25K	open_loop	.../dreamweaver
2026-08-15	memory	83ba2858	6K	open_loop	/home/khoward/.claude/projects/-home-khoward/memory

Recent events — last 30 rows

Latest enriched rows from the JSONL (sorted by date desc, active desc as tiebreaker). M = manually labeled.

Date	Tool	Project	Session	Active	Output	Outcome
2026-08-21	Codex	<home>	01a0220a	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-21	CC	<home>	0b9399c2	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-21	CC	<home>	1616a2ae	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-21	CC	<home>	29505b44	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-21	CC	<home>	44854411	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-21	CC	<home>	512a42fb	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-21	CC	<home>	6dee75eb	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-21	CC	<home>	8a1048b8	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-21	CC	<home>	ab499e99	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-21	CC	<home>	b26fd812	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-21	CC	<home>	b3169def	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-21	CC	<home>	d1ccf06b	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-21	CC	<home>	e06b62e6	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	pal	5af22ad7	476K	9K	open_loop
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	0257e5c9	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	121e6855	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	254d89af	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	2e9df8a3	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	38e4bbde	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	3b6c3dad	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	3f575425	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	4bbc80b2	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	7fbd9477	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	82c4ffc0	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	87308430	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	95a0851f	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	9ed200fd	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	a20c2111	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	a92342f8	0	0	no_repo
2026-08-20	CC	<home>	adb9e2e8	0	0	no_repo

Generated 2026-08-21 13:00 UTC from ~/ideas/pal/dashboards/token_burn.jsonl (1000 rows). Sources: ~/.codex/sessions/ (exact), ~/.claude/projects/-home-khoward/ (exact). No estimate lane currently active.