agent-expenditure

Agent Building

Tracks per-agent token usage and flags waste in parallel dispatch. Use when evaluating parallel agent efficiency or after a multi-agent run.

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Source SKILL.md: https://github.com/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry/blob/HEAD/skills/orchestration/agent-expenditure/SKILL.md

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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:

Agent Count	Expected Overhead	Guidance
1-3	Negligible	Dispatch freely
4-5	10-15%	Acceptable; plan first
6-8	20-30%	Monitor closely
9+	30%+	Likely counterproductive

Coordination overhead is measured as shared-file conflicts: concurrent Read/Write operations on the same file by different agents, as a percentage of total agent runtime.

Post-Dispatch Review Checklist

After parallel agent runs, evaluate:

Did each agent produce unique findings?
Was total token expenditure proportional to value?
Did any agent duplicate another's work?
Would fewer agents have produced the same result?

If 2+ questions answer no, reduce agent count in future dispatches of the same type.

Waste Signals

See modules/waste-signals.md for the 5 waste signal categories and detection criteria.

Cross-References

.claude/rules/plan-before-large-dispatch.md for the 4+ agent planning requirement
conserve:token-conservation for session-level token budgeting
conjure:agent-teams for dispatch coordination