---
id: "action-calculate-token-economics"
type: "action-item"
source_timestamps: ["00:21:11", "00:22:05"]
tags: ["economics"]
related: ["concept-token-economics"]
action: "Prototype tasks across different model tiers to calculate blended token costs and prove ROI."
outcome: "Cost-efficient AI systems that justify their API expenditures to the business."
speakers: ["Nate B. Jones"]
sources: ["s42-job-market-split"]
sourceVaultSlug: "s42-job-market-split"
originDay: 42
---
# Calculate Token Economics

## Action

Before deploying a multi-agent system:

1. Build a prototype of the target task.
2. **Cycle through model tiers** — frontier, mid-tier, small.
3. Build a spreadsheet to calculate the **blended cost per token** for the full task (including planner overhead).
4. Mathematically prove the system yields a **positive ROI** versus a human or simpler-software alternative.

## Skill it operationalises

[[concept-token-economics]] — the seventh skill in [[framework-7-ai-skills]].

## Architectural lever

Intelligent [[concept-task-decomposition]] is the primary lever for lowering blended cost: route trivial subtasks to small models, reserve frontier models for tasks that need them.

## Expected outcome

Cost-efficient AI systems that justify their API expenditures to the business.