Token efficiency is an architectural concern

We usually talk about token consumption as a cost issue. It is also a signal that the architecture may be making models repeatedly rediscover context, re-explain decisions, or review material they do not need.

Reducing tokens should not mean making the system less careful. It should mean giving each step the smallest useful context, preserving decisions in a form that can be reused, and using deterministic checks where another language-model pass adds little.

Sometimes a larger context is exactly what the work needs. The mistake is assuming that every participant needs the entire history every time.

Efficiency is not only paying less for the same prompt. It is designing a system that knows what each step actually needs to know.