Token Burn

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

today · in flight
1.4M active
14 sessions · spend 50.3M · Claude Code 1.4M
by project: las 1.4M · <home> 0
top session 5af22ad7 (las, 1.4M, —)
2026-08-30
as of 2026-08-30T13:00:13Z
Stupid button · 28m ago · gemma4:e4b · 3494t in / 901t out · 116.2s

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 01a04b01-5edc, 4 threads, 3 forks, max depth 1, charged 23.8M, replay_pct 94.6, output_h 88K, cost_per_output 271.0. Agents involved are Chandrasekhar, Harvey, and James.

What needs a verdict

One contrarian observation

The <home> directory has a 0.0 acceptance ratio, but its 1.9M waste tokens are noted as unmeasurable due to running outside a git repo.

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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
0 accepted
unsettled 7.4M · acceptance 0%
spend 263.4M · 165 sessions · Claude Code 8.1M / Codex 1.4M
Last 30 days
6.1M accepted
unsettled 97.5M · acceptance 5%
spend 4.64B · 687 sessions · Claude Code 93.3M / Codex 37.5M
Last 90 days
6.1M accepted
unsettled 285.5M · acceptance 2%
spend 11.82B · 840 sessions · Claude Code 215.7M / Codex 103.1M

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
2026-07-2834.5M1.78B42<home> (29.6M)?=45
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 
las3.9M
mainstay-av3.4M
<home>1.9M
Downloads83K
pal29K
templari27K
pal/templari4K

By outcome — last 7 days

committed 3 #17 (OPEN)
open_loop 8
no_repo 167

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
pal2.8M31%
pal/dashboards1.7M100%
las1.4M22%
pal/templari247K56%
memory64K4%
mainstay-av00%

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

ProjectAcceptedRatioMix
dreamweaver00%
<home>00%
panacea-ai00%
payday00%
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
2026-08-24mainstay-av5af22ad71.8Mopen_loop.../mainstay-av/docs/entity
2026-08-22mainstay-av5af22ad71.8Mopen_loop.../mainstay-av/docs/entity
2026-08-29las5af22ad71.7Mcommitted.../las/.worktrees/mvp
2026-08-29mainstay-av5af22ad71.6Mopen_loop.../mainstay-av/docs/entity
2026-08-30las5af22ad71.4Mcommitted.../las/.worktrees/mvp
2026-08-21pal5af22ad71.4Mopen_loop.../pal
2026-08-28lasd33e7f08689Kcommitted · #17 (OPEN).../las
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
2026-08-24mainstay-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
2026-08-28pal/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
2026-08-30CClas5af22ad71.4M57Kcommitted
2026-08-30CC<home>1f8a375400no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>27b279ff00no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>425a302500no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>45fcb43800no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>5b1054d000no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>7f365d9a00no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>849787bd00no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>9457f75700no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>abb0c46f00no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>bc6ed1b700no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>d9fefee100no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>daf21c1700no_repo
2026-08-29CClas5af22ad71.7M195Kcommitted
2026-08-29CCmainstay-av5af22ad71.6M5Kopen_loop
2026-08-29Codex<home>01a04b02436K23Kno_repo
2026-08-29Codex<home>01a04b04363K22Kno_repo
2026-08-29Codex<home>01a04b02258K25Kno_repo
2026-08-29Codex<home>01a04b01230K17Kno_repo
2026-08-29Codex<home>01a0462418K2Kno_repo
2026-08-29CC<home>11b483fd00no_repo
2026-08-29CC<home>1adf317300no_repo
2026-08-29CC<home>2763bbaa00no_repo
2026-08-29CC<home>2c85573000no_repo
2026-08-29CC<home>3b956fdb00no_repo
2026-08-29CC<home>3c9a0a8100no_repo
2026-08-29CC<home>4ce5393100no_repo
2026-08-29CC<home>5dd0dd7b00no_repo
2026-08-29CC<home>5fe5159800no_repo
2026-08-29CC<home>65c864ba00no_repo

Generated 2026-08-30 13:00 UTC from ~/ideas/pal/dashboards/token_burn.jsonl (1033 rows). Sources: ~/.codex/sessions/ (exact), ~/.claude/projects/-home-khoward/ (exact). No estimate lane currently active.