{"id":16883,"date":"2026-08-03T10:48:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T17:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=16883"},"modified":"2026-07-17T10:56:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T17:56:13","slug":"tokenmaxing-is-the-new-lines-of-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=16883","title":{"rendered":"Tokenmaxing is the new lines of code"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When we measure effort instead of value, we lose sight of what we are trying to achieve<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like lines of code produced per day and story points, AI token usage is now being tracked by most large tech companies. Even to the point performance reviews depend on high usage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The natural response: tokenmaxing. Tokenmaxing is a way of using AI that absorbs tremendous amounts of AI tokens without regard to efficacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Prompt flooding: stuffing massive codebases, documentation, and context into every prompt, burning tokens on context the model doesn\u2019t actually need.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Agent swarms: running multiple AI agents in parallel to maximize code output, regardless of whether the work is coordinated or coherent.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Background loops: keeping AI sessions or agents running continuously in the background, racking up token spend without clear ownership of what is being produced \u2014 or why.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.infoworld.com\/article\/4195756\/from-story-points-to-tokenmaxxing-why-engineering-keeps-measuring-the-wrong-things.html\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.infoworld.com\/article\/4195756\/from-story-points-to-tokenmaxxing-why-engineering-keeps-measuring-the-wrong-things.html\">Bryan ONeill finds the better question<\/a> is to ask does this reduce friction for a user, close a gap in a workflow, or improve reliability for a customer &#8211; or is it merely &#8216;activity&#8217;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He argues, and I have also found, that spec-driven development is far better: a method where engineers write detailed specifications first and AI generates code against them. But the spec should now go further and be the place where engineering intent and business value get defined together. The spec is where you answer, \u201cWhy does this matter, and what problem are we solving?\u201d before a single token gets spent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When we measure effort instead of value, we lose sight of what we are trying to achieve Like lines of code produced per day and story points, AI token usage is now being tracked by most large tech companies. Even to the point performance reviews depend on high usage. The natural response: tokenmaxing. Tokenmaxing is a way of using AI that absorbs tremendous amounts of AI tokens without regard to efficacy. Bryan ONeill finds the better question is to ask&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=16883\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[28,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-cool"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-4oj","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16883"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16884,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16883\/revisions\/16884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}