A new pattern called "tokenminning" is emerging as the antithesis of "tokenmaxxing," which assumes inputs with more tokens lead to better outputs. Tokenminning systematically minimizes token use to reduce costs, latency, and complexity while maintaining AI agent performance. The article notes that tokenmaxxing introduces significant problems, including financial cost, as every token has a price. A quick analysis of the author's personal usage, who is head of AI for a biotech startup, shows interactive chats average 492 input tokens and 1,650 output tokens per chat, totaling 2,142 daily, while agents average 56,497 input tokens and 4,594 output tokens per invocation, totaling 61,091 daily. The author would spend roughly $40 per day in API usage costs using Claude Opus 4 without optimizations. Some engineers have reported spending over $10,000 per week, leading big tech companies to enforce AI usage limits.