--- title: Agentic Tip #3: Tokenmaxxing out, prioritization in description: Tokenmaxxing — running many AI agents in parallel to maximize token consumption — often feels productive but can hurt actual output. The advice is to start... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/agentic-tip-3-tokenmaxxing-out-prioritization-in-rzrmepywe twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Agentic Tip #3: Tokenmaxxing out, prioritization in | daily.dev og:description: Tokenmaxxing — running many AI agents in parallel to maximize token consumption — often feels productive but can hurt actual output. The advice is to start... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/agentic-tip-3-tokenmaxxing-out-prioritization-in-rzrmepywe og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/rZrMepywE.png og:image:alt: Agentic Tip #3: Tokenmaxxing out, prioritization in og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Agentic Tip #3: Tokenmaxxing out, prioritization in **[Agentic Engineering](https://daily.dev/sources/agentic)** · [@idoshamun](https://daily.dev/idoshamun) · 2 min read · 9 upvotes · 2 comments ## Summary Tokenmaxxing — running many AI agents in parallel to maximize token consumption — often feels productive but can hurt actual output. The advice is to start each day by identifying must-ship tasks, deliver those first, and keep background agents low priority. Long-running autonomous tasks (research, query optimization) work well in the background. If you notice a pile of unreviewed PRs and no shipped work, reduce concurrency and refocus on delivery. ## Content First, let's align on terminology before we go deeper. Tokenmaxxing is the habit of making sure your agents are always busy, spawning many of them to work in parallel. Either to top the token-consumption charts in your org, or just to feel productive. --- It may sound controversial, but tokenmaxxing and getting shit done don't always go hand in hand. In many cases it actually increases your time to production. You get high off the feeling of doing many things at once, but in reality you're just constantly switching context. And it's so tempting to optimize for zero idle time because it's so easy, but then you end the day feeling like you didn't ship what you actually set out to ship. I start every day by asking myself: what are the tasks I must ship today? Once I know the answer, it puts me in the right mindset. Deliver those first. Sometimes I'll run 1-2 agents in the background, but they stay low priority. The relevant agents might wait hours before I follow up on them. The other thing that helps is spinning up a long-running process. Research, or a task with a well-defined numeric goal, like "reduce the runtime of this query." The agent runs autonomously while I stay focused on my primary task. And sometimes I just do one thing at a time, and that's fine too. Find your balance, but always keep the focus on getting shit done. If you notice you've got a pile of PRs open, agent threads rotting, and you haven't shipped anything in a while, take concurrency down a notch. Good luck! --- In case you missed, [tip #2 is here.](https://daily.dev/posts/FZcDDRxku) ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@denisb0** · 1 upvotes > What about loops? Addy Osmany and Boris Cherny said it's all about loops now... > [https://addyosmani.com/blog/loop-engineering/](https://addyosmani.com/blog/loop-engineering/) ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Don't let AI burn you out](https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-let-ai-burn-you-out-6knhrctu8) · RUBYLAND · 19 upvotes · 4 comments - [Stateless AI Is Failing Developers, and Token Maxxing Is Making It Worse](https://daily.dev/posts/stateless-ai-is-failing-developers-and-token-maxxing-is-making-it-worse-qrzdjvdej) · SD Times · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Tokenmaxxing and the search for AI metrics that matter](https://daily.dev/posts/tokenmaxxing-and-the-search-for-ai-metrics-that-matter-0j3khk4uw) · LeadDev · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#productivity](https://daily.dev/tags/productivity) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/agentic-tip-3-tokenmaxxing-out-prioritization-in-rzrmepywe) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https://daily.dev/posts/agentic-tip-3-tokenmaxxing-out-prioritization-in-rzrmepywe","headline":"Agentic Tip #3: Tokenmaxxing out, prioritization in","text":"Tokenmaxxing — running many AI agents in parallel to maximize token consumption — often feels productive but can hurt actual output. 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