#token costs

A revenue-grade kWh meter being wired onto a copper busbar, its current-transformer clamp caught mid-close around the bar with the meter's clear cover not yet seated

The Economics, Energy, and Physical Limits of Claude Code and Agentic Development Tools

Every tool call, cache read, and subagent spawn in an agentic coding session is a metered unit with a real cost behind it. This traces where those units actually go, and what stops them multiplying without limit.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 26, 2026 · 19 min read

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