Agent Token Waste Monitoring

When To Use

• After parallel agent dispatch completes
• When evaluating whether to increase agent count
• During retrospectives on agent-heavy workflows
• When plan-before-large-dispatch rule triggers

When NOT To Use

• Single-agent workflows (no coordination overhead)
• During active agent execution (post-hoc analysis)
• For token budgeting (use token-conservation instead)

Brooks's Law for Agents

Dispatching more agents does not always help. Coordination overhead grows with agent count: