Token Burn

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

today · in flight
2.7M active
15 sessions · spend 47.1M · Claude Code 2.7M
by project: mainstay-av 1.8M · <home> 580K · las 146K
top session 5af22ad7 (mainstay-av, 1.8M, —)
2026-08-24
as of 2026-08-24T13:00:14Z
Stupid button · 29m ago · gemma4:e4b · 3986t in / 984t out · 41.7s

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 fork amplification details are: root 019fee2e-1781, 13 threads, 12 forks, max depth 2, charged 579.6M, replay 95.7%, output 1.8M, cost per output 315.8. Agents involved are Averroes, Copernicus, Faraday, Galileo, Halley, Hooke.

What needs a verdict

One contrarian observation

The pal project has a high acceptance ratio of 0.586, but it also contributed to the 1.4M unsettled burn on 2026-08-21 in mainstay-av's big spender list.

---

Measurability caveat (generated, not model-authored): <home> (22.5M) 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
6.1M accepted
unsettled 6.0M · acceptance 18%
spend 895.0M · 173 sessions · Codex 20.5M / Claude Code 14.3M
Last 30 days
8.7M accepted
unsettled 173.9M · acceptance 4%
spend 9.06B · 686 sessions · Claude Code 147.0M / Codex 65.2M
Last 90 days
8.7M accepted
unsettled 286.4M · acceptance 3%
spend 11.85B · 809 sessions · Claude Code 210.3M / Codex 114.4M

Daily heatmap — last 60 days

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

LessMore· log-scale, exact lane
34.5M on 07-28

Top 10 days

DateActiveSpend SessionsTop projectOutcomes
2026-07-2834.5M1.78B47<home> (29.6M)?=50
2026-08-0124.5M1.57B10payday (6.1M)?=20
2026-07-1623.3M797.0M24<home> (16.3M)?=27
2026-07-3123.1M2.10B9payday (8.1M)?=34
2026-08-1822.3M554.5M38<home> (21.6M)no_repo=38 · accepted=5 · PRs #27
2026-07-3019.4M645.3M26payday (16.5M)?=31
2026-07-2118.3M337.5M2<home> (9.1M)?=4
2026-08-0616.5M592.1M51<home> (12.0M)?=58
2026-07-2911.2M118.2M25payday (10.8M)?=27
2026-07-2410.3M401.9M2las (5.9M)?=4

By project — last 7 days

ProjectActive 
<home>22.5M
pal4.7M
mainstay-av3.8M
pal/dashboards1.7M
las1.5M
pal/templari257K
memory87K
Downloads83K
.claude60K
templari27K
hooks25K
dreamweaver25K

By outcome — last 7 days

accepted 11 #32 (MERGED), #16 (MERGED), #27 (MERGED)
open_loop 15
no_repo 179

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
pal4.6M51%
pal/dashboards1.7M100%
las1.4M59%
memory606K39%
pal/templari427K98%
mainstay-av00%

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

ProjectAcceptedRatioMix
<home>00%
payday00%
dreamweaver00%
panacea-ai00%
mainstay-av00%
pal/placeholders00%

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
2026-08-12dreamweaverd476d9026.5Mopen_loop.../dreamweaver/.worktrees/deploy-main
2026-08-14dreamweaverd476d9022.2Mopen_loop.../dreamweaver/.worktrees/deploy-main
2026-08-24mainstay-av5af22ad71.8Mopen_loop.../mainstay-av/docs/entity
2026-08-22mainstay-av5af22ad71.8Mopen_loop.../mainstay-av/docs/entity
2026-08-21pal5af22ad71.4Mopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-12pal/placeholdersd476d9021.2Mopen_loop.../pal/placeholders
2026-08-20pal5af22ad7476Kopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-17pal83ba2858388Kopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-21mainstay-av5af22ad7233Kopen_loop.../mainstay-av/docs/entity
2026-08-24lasd33e7f08146Kopen_loop.../las
2026-08-23pald33e7f0868Kopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-16panacea-ai83ba285853Kopen_loop.../panacea-ai
2026-08-16dreamweaver83ba285841Kopen_loop.../dreamweaver
2026-08-24mainstay-avd33e7f0828Kopen_loop.../mainstay-av/apps/worker
2026-08-24pald33e7f0827Kopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-24templarid33e7f0827Kopen_loop.../templari
2026-08-19dreamweaver5af22ad725Kopen_loop.../dreamweaver
2026-08-23memoryd33e7f0823Kopen_loop/home/khoward/.claude/projects/-home-khoward/memory
2026-08-23pal/memoryd33e7f0814Kopen_loop.../pal/memory
2026-08-23pal/templarid33e7f0811Kopen_loop.../pal/templari
2026-08-15memory83ba28586Kopen_loop/home/khoward/.claude/projects/-home-khoward/memory
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
2026-08-24CCmainstay-av5af22ad71.8M21Kopen_loop
2026-08-24CC<home>d33e7f08580K44Kno_repo
2026-08-24CClasd33e7f08146K58Kopen_loop
2026-08-24CCDownloads5af22ad783K21Kno_repo
2026-08-24CCmainstay-avd33e7f0828K9Kopen_loop
2026-08-24CCpald33e7f0827K14Kopen_loop
2026-08-24CCtemplarid33e7f0827K12Kopen_loop
2026-08-24CC<home>0a4d300600no_repo
2026-08-24CC<home>1e7fe95600no_repo
2026-08-24CC<home>1fa95ef300no_repo
2026-08-24CC<home>2c07744700no_repo
2026-08-24CC<home>2c743bf200no_repo
2026-08-24CC<home>490e2bc700no_repo
2026-08-24CC<home>53a00c4d00no_repo
2026-08-24CC<home>79f18e8100no_repo
2026-08-24CC<home>8437c2d700no_repo
2026-08-24CC<home>d75d6a5c00no_repo
2026-08-24CC<home>e53e77c500no_repo
2026-08-24CC<home>feda59ad00no_repo
2026-08-23CC<home>d33e7f08247K22Kno_repo
2026-08-23CCpald33e7f0868K9Kopen_loop
2026-08-23CCmemoryd33e7f0823K1Kopen_loop
2026-08-23CCpal/memoryd33e7f0814K2Kopen_loop
2026-08-23CCpal/templarid33e7f0811K3Kopen_loop
2026-08-23CCideasd33e7f082K888open_loop
2026-08-23CC<home>06c34a2e00no_repo
2026-08-23CC<home>0b6e5bec00no_repo
2026-08-23CC<home>1c8807b300no_repo
2026-08-23CC<home>2994ab1200no_repo
2026-08-23CC<home>3fdc818b00no_repo

Generated 2026-08-24 13:00 UTC from ~/ideas/pal/dashboards/token_burn.jsonl (999 rows). Sources: ~/.codex/sessions/ (exact), ~/.claude/projects/-home-khoward/ (exact). No estimate lane currently active.