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 030d8f16 (<home>, 0, —)
2026-09-02
as of 2026-09-02T12:55:30Z
Stupid button · 25m ago · gemma4:e4b · 3473t in / 970t out · 26.9s

Trend vs last week

What worked

What wasted tokens

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 01a04b01-5edc involved 4 threads, 3 forks, and a max_depth of 1, charging 23.8M and having a cost_per_output of 271.0. Agents involved were Chandrasekhar, Harvey, and James.

What needs a verdict

One contrarian observation

The <home> project has 1.9M in waste_active_h, but its acceptance_note is "UNMEASURABLE — ran outside any git repo, so 0.0 is the meter failing to see the work, not a judgement on it".

---

Measurability caveat (generated, not model-authored): <home> (1.9M) 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
12.8M accepted
unsettled 2.4M · acceptance 75%
spend 469.4M · 166 sessions · Claude Code 15.7M / Codex 1.4M
Last 30 days
12.8M accepted
unsettled 95.5M · acceptance 11%
spend 3.28B · 731 sessions · Claude Code 73.5M / Codex 37.5M
Last 90 days
12.8M accepted
unsettled 159.8M · acceptance 7%
spend 5.20B · 808 sessions · Codex 97.4M / Claude Code 77.9M

Daily heatmap — last 60 days

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

LessMore· log-scale, exact lane
29.1M on 07-28

Top 10 days

DateActiveSpend SessionsTop projectOutcomes
2026-07-2829.1M1.09B22<home> (29.1M)?=22
2026-08-1822.3M554.5M38<home> (21.6M)?=43
2026-08-0616.5M592.1M51<home> (12.0M)?=58
2026-07-1615.7M522.1M23<home> (15.7M)?=23
2026-08-127.7M116.0M25dreamweaver (6.5M)?=27
2026-08-086.1M358.6M27dreamweaver (3.0M)?=37
2026-08-076.0M352.8M28<home> (4.1M)?=35
2026-08-315.9M143.9M26las (5.8M)no_repo=24 · open_loop=3 · accepted=2 · PRs #18
2026-06-155.9M132.6M9<home> (5.9M)?=9
2026-08-195.6M205.7M27pal (2.3M)?=36

By project — last 7 days

ProjectActive 
las13.4M
<home>1.9M
mainstay-av1.6M
pal/templari65K
pal59K

By outcome — last 7 days

accepted 6 #19 (MERGED), #18 (MERGED)
committed 1 #17 (OPEN)
open_loop 7
no_repo 166

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

ProjectAcceptedRatioMix
las12.8M85%
pal00%
pal/templari00%
mainstay-av00%
templari00%
memory00%

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

ProjectAcceptedRatioMix
<home>00%
dreamweaver00%
pal00%
mainstay-av00%
pal/placeholders00%
pal/dashboards00%

Needs validation — last 14 days (22 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.

DateProjectSessionActiveAutocwd
2026-08-24mainstay-av5af22ad71.8Mopen_loop.../mainstay-av/docs/entity
2026-08-22mainstay-av5af22ad71.8Mopen_loop.../mainstay-av/docs/entity
2026-08-29mainstay-av5af22ad71.6Mopen_loop.../mainstay-av/docs/entity
2026-08-21pal5af22ad71.4Mopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-28lasd33e7f08689Kcommitted · #17 (OPEN).../las
2026-08-20pal5af22ad7476Kopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-21mainstay-av5af22ad7233Kopen_loop.../mainstay-av/docs/entity
2026-08-24lasd33e7f08146Kopen_loop.../las
2026-08-23pald33e7f0868Kopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-31pal/templarid33e7f0861Kopen_loop.../pal/templari
2026-08-24mainstay-avd33e7f0828Kopen_loop.../mainstay-av/apps/worker
2026-08-24pald33e7f0827Kopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-24templarid33e7f0827Kopen_loop.../templari
2026-09-01pal5af22ad724Kopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-23memoryd33e7f0823Kopen_loop/home/khoward/.claude/projects/-home-khoward/memory
2026-08-31pal5af22ad723Kopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-23pal/memoryd33e7f0814Kopen_loop.../pal/memory
2026-08-23pal/templarid33e7f0811Kopen_loop.../pal/templari
2026-08-31pald33e7f0810Kopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-28pal/templarid33e7f084Kopen_loop.../pal/templari
2026-08-28pald33e7f082Kopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-23ideasd33e7f082Kopen_loop/home/khoward/ideas

Recent events — last 30 rows

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

DateToolProjectSessionActiveOutputOutcome
2026-09-02CC<home>030d8f1600no_repo
2026-09-02CC<home>3504b68e00no_repo
2026-09-02CC<home>357e5bb200no_repo
2026-09-02CC<home>3a65aaf000no_repo
2026-09-02CC<home>6acba2f200no_repo
2026-09-02CC<home>7d1ecc3000no_repo
2026-09-02CC<home>991f61e800no_repo
2026-09-02CC<home>a704b37e00no_repo
2026-09-02CC<home>b1a74b9600no_repo
2026-09-02CC<home>c438edce00no_repo
2026-09-02CC<home>dcadecf800no_repo
2026-09-02CC<home>f94c2eed00no_repo
2026-09-01CClas5af22ad7996K88Kaccepted #19
2026-09-01CC<home>4b15a997495K7Kno_repo
2026-09-01CClas4b15a99756K20Kaccepted #19
2026-09-01CCpal5af22ad724K10Kopen_loop
2026-09-01CC<home>079bbc6100no_repo
2026-09-01CC<home>092e5ff700no_repo
2026-09-01CC<home>0f39d33900no_repo
2026-09-01CC<home>12324a0a00no_repo
2026-09-01CC<home>1f4fb5ba00no_repo
2026-09-01CC<home>2011b94200no_repo
2026-09-01CC<home>2246f36100no_repo
2026-09-01CC<home>289430b300no_repo
2026-09-01CC<home>312d95cb00no_repo
2026-09-01CC<home>37b8d3ad00no_repo
2026-09-01CC<home>52abb15800no_repo
2026-09-01CC<home>5a78019e00no_repo
2026-09-01CC<home>66ac0a5100no_repo
2026-09-01CC<home>7806fa6000no_repo

Generated 2026-09-02 12:55 UTC from ~/ideas/pal/dashboards/token_burn.jsonl (931 rows). Sources: ~/.codex/sessions/ (exact), ~/.claude/projects/-home-khoward/ (exact). No estimate lane currently active.