A Hands-On Course · 8 lessons

Token Engineering

The same result for fewer, cheaper tokens — the right model, the right token, the right cache, at the right time — without degrading output.

Short lessons (~5–8 min each), each with one tangible win and a retrieval-practice quiz. Built for engineers who already use AI coding tools and want the non-obvious mechanics.

Grounded in the agentpatterns.ai corpus (CC BY 4.0). Keep the Glossary open as you go.

Part 1 · The Frame

1 What Token Engineering Is A single discipline for getting the same answer for fewer, cheaper tokens — without trading away one point of output quality to do it.

Part 2 · The Four Rights

2 Right Model — Cost-Aware Routing Stop paying top-tier prices for file searches. Route each task to the cheapest model that clears the bar, and let a cheap validator decide when to escalate. 3 Right Token — Lean Context, Lean Output The cheapest token is the one you never generate. Cut waste at three sources — tool output, generated code, and the codebase the agent reads. 4 Right Cache — Caching Discipline A prompt cache is the cheapest token there is — but it only pays out if your prefix is stable and your tokenizer never moves underneath it. 5 Right Time — Batch & Temporal Routing For any call whose result you don't need in the next second, the synchronous API is the wrong price. Defer it, and the same tokens cost half.

Part 3 · Scaling

6 Effort & Budget Scaling Reasoning effort is a dial, not a constant. Turn it up only where deeper thinking actually changes the answer — and pay nothing extra everywhere else. 7 Measurement — Spend & the Cost/Quality Frontier A finance dashboard reports every cut as "lower spend." The Pareto frontier is the one frame that tells you which cuts were free and which quietly sold off your quality.

Capstone

8 Cut Token Spend Without Losing Quality Eight lessons, one reflex: find where the tokens leak, then apply the one of the four rights that plugs that leak — model, token, cache, or time. Here's the whole course as a lookup table, plus a mixed review.