Token waste – Definition & Meaning

Definition of token waste

: model input or output tokens that consume money, time, context capacity, or computing resources without materially improving the result of an AI task
- The team found that repeatedly sending the full tool log created more token waste than the model's final answer.
- Removing duplicated searches reduced token waste without lowering the agent's task-completion rate.

Origin & history

The phrase became common in AI engineering as token-based pricing and long-running agent loops made unnecessary context, repetition, and reasoning directly measurable as cost. By 2025, researchers were proposing a token waste ratio for redundant model output; in 2026, research on AI-agent trajectories measured removable reasoning and execution spans as token waste.

Editorial references

Sources & further reading

3 sources

Quantifying Information Gain and Redundancy in Multi-Turn LLM Conversations NeurIPS 2025 Workshop on Multi-Turn Interactions in LLMs · 2025
The Mythical Token Month: Reprompting and Token Waste Gartner · 2026-06-25
How Do AI Agents Waste Your Money? arXiv · 2026-11-04

Test yourself

Which of these is the meaning of token waste?

Related terms

token budget an allowance or limit on the number of tokens an AI system may process or generate during a… reasoning economy the study and optimization of how an AI system allocates tokens, computation, time, and money… agent economics the measurement and management of the full cost and business value of work performed by AI… context engineering the practice of deciding exactly what information, instructions, tools, and history go into a… context rot the gradual decline in a model's accuracy and focus as its context window fills with more and… harness optimization the iterative, evaluation-guided improvement of the prompts, tools, memory, skills, control… compounding error the accumulation or amplification of mistakes across the steps of an AI workflow, so that an…

Cite this entry

"Token waste." AI Dictionary, Dadgogo, https://dadgogo.com/dictionary/token-waste/. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.