Token Burn

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

today · in flight
4.2M active
14 sessions · spend 28.4M · Claude Code 4.2M
by project: las 4.2M · <home> 0
top session 5af22ad7 (las, 4.2M, —)
2026-08-31
as of 2026-08-31T12:55:24Z
Stupid button · 23m ago · gemma4:e4b · 3183t in / 732t out · 124.1s

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 used 4 threads and 3 forks, with a max depth of 1, charging 23.8M, and has a cost per output of 271.0. The agents involved were Chandrasekhar, Harvey, and James.

What needs a verdict

One contrarian observation

The <home> project has 1.4M waste_active_h, but its acceptance_ratio is 0.0, and 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> (1.4M) 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 8.2M · acceptance 0%
spend 238.4M · 165 sessions · Claude Code 8.2M / Codex 1.4M
Last 30 days
6.1M accepted
unsettled 78.9M · acceptance 6%
spend 3.09B · 702 sessions · Claude Code 71.6M / Codex 37.5M
Last 90 days
6.1M accepted
unsettled 290.3M · acceptance 2%
spend 11.83B · 860 sessions · Claude Code 218.5M / Codex 102.0M

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 
las6.6M
mainstay-av1.6M
<home>1.4M
pal/templari4K
pal2K

By outcome — last 7 days

committed 3 #17 (OPEN)
open_loop 3
no_repo 165

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
pal2.8M36%
pal/dashboards1.7M100%
las1.4M15%
pal/templari247K56%
memory64K4%
mainstay-av00%

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

ProjectAcceptedRatioMix
<home>00%
dreamweaver00%
mainstay-av00%
pal/placeholders00%
panacea-ai00%
tmp00%

Needs validation — last 14 days (21 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
2026-08-30las5af22ad74.2Mcommitted.../las/.worktrees/mvp
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
2026-08-21pal5af22ad71.4Mopen_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
2026-08-24mainstay-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
2026-08-31CC<home>030b8d5100no_repo
2026-08-31CC<home>06c6069000no_repo
2026-08-31CC<home>36b470a900no_repo
2026-08-31CC<home>37d8980300no_repo
2026-08-31CC<home>391cdd0f00no_repo
2026-08-31CC<home>3efd06cf00no_repo
2026-08-31CC<home>5d3dd1ce00no_repo
2026-08-31CC<home>7bd0a90600no_repo
2026-08-31CC<home>b7ffc94200no_repo
2026-08-31CC<home>c0a6f49900no_repo
2026-08-31CC<home>dd9adc6700no_repo
2026-08-31CC<home>ee8add9600no_repo
2026-08-30CClas5af22ad74.2M90Kcommitted
2026-08-30CC<home>089a4d7900no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>08a72c4100no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>129e232d00no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>1f8a375400no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>21007b4c00no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>222eafc100no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>27b279ff00no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>2c0307ee00no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>3a5d007100no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>3daeb4cd00no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>425a302500no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>45fcb43800no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>5b1054d000no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>6f81910400no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>7888f9fa00no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>7f365d9a00no_repo
2026-08-30CC<home>849787bd00no_repo

Generated 2026-08-31 12:55 UTC from ~/ideas/pal/dashboards/token_burn.jsonl (1052 rows). Sources: ~/.codex/sessions/ (exact), ~/.claude/projects/-home-khoward/ (exact). No estimate lane currently active.