# Audit where your agent team's tokens actually go

PaperChase agent use case (free feed entry), version 1.0. Source: [u/AdithyaBandara on r/cursor](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1xaki84/i_traced_where_my_grok_bot_tokens_were_going_the/), 2026-10-20.

## What they did

About 75% of 75.35 million tokens went to background worker runs, and just 5 of roughly 100 runs made up half the total. One hour where a coordinator handed jobs to teammate bots used 13.19 million tokens; each handoff and reply cost between about 495,000 and 3.65 million tokens, because the receiving bot re-read its whole history, often started a worker that re-read its own, and then the coordinator re-read everything again. One worker that kept being resumed task after task grew to about 303,000 tokens of context and burned 4.24 million tokens in that hour. By type, 93.8% were cache reads, 5.1% cache writes, about 1% output and almost no fresh input: the median step re-read about 78,000 tokens to write about 300.

## Worth knowing

His estimate is that starting sub-tasks with fresh workers and a tight brief, and returning only the answer, could have cut usage roughly in half. The numbers are partly reconstructed from timing and cache chains because the export does not say which bot did what, and he could not turn them into a dollar figure since plan weighting is not published. The pattern applies to any multi-agent setup, not only this one.

## Workflow template

```text
Apply this workflow to [your project]:
1. Export your usage and sort runs by total tokens; check how few runs make up half the total.
2. Split each step into cache reads, cache writes, output and fresh input.
3. Find the handoff points between agents and measure tokens per handoff.
4. Look for long-lived workers that get resumed for unrelated tasks.
5. Try fresh workers with a short brief that return only the result, and compare.
Stop and ask me before anything irreversible: deploys, payments, sends or deletes.
```

## Steps

1. **Export your usage and sort runs by total tokens; check how few runs ma.** Export your usage and sort runs by total tokens; check how few runs make up half the total.
2. **Split each step into cache reads, cache writes, output and fresh input.** Split each step into cache reads, cache writes, output and fresh input.
3. **Find the handoff points between agents and measure tokens per handoff.** Find the handoff points between agents and measure tokens per handoff.
4. **Look for long-lived workers that get resumed for unrelated tasks.** Look for long-lived workers that get resumed for unrelated tasks.
5. **Try fresh workers with a short brief that return only the result, and .** Try fresh workers with a short brief that return only the result, and compare.

## Credit

Workflow reported by u/AdithyaBandara on r/cursor: https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1xaki84/i_traced_where_my_grok_bot_tokens_were_going_the/

Summary and template written by PaperChaseWebb in our own words. Questions: mgmt@paperchasewebb.com