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:

1. Did each agent produce unique findings?
2. Was total token expenditure proportional to value?
3. Did any agent duplicate another's work?
4. 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