Spend Credits Like They're Yours: Building Token-Efficient Agents
Most advice about token efficiency is prompt golf. Trim the system prompt. Cut the pleasantries. Replace the paragraph with a bullet. Shave two hundred tokens off the instructions and feel briefly virtuous about it.
It's the wrong game. Two hundred tokens is a rounding error next to a single tool result you didn't need to look at, dragged forward through every turn of a thirty-turn run. The wins that matter are structural: they come from deciding what never enters the context window in the first place. Not what gets said more tersely — what never gets said at all.
This is a practical guide to making that decision well. Four moves, each one a place where a real agent either touches something or doesn't, and then a section on what to do about it when you sit down to build your own.