Gate token spend to qualified ideas
Usage-based AI costs are now visible on invoices, and leaders can see agents running on ideas that never qualified; one in five organizations already reports that AI operating costs, tokens included, constrain its use of AI (McKinsey, 2026). The cheapest token is the one not spent on an unqualified idea: a stage-gated pipeline stops agent spend at intake, and telemetry proves what the spend that cleared the gate actually produced. The measure that matters is not tokens or licenses but the total cost per completed, verified outcome.
Between decisions, not instead of them
Agents gather, draft, reconcile, measure and chase evidence. People attest the decisions that matter, and the record shows who signed. Consequential judgment stays human; the drudgery that used to sit between decisions is where agents return their cost many times over.
Agent Actions, counted against value
AI capacity is stated in Agent Actions rather than tokens, so the number in the contract is one an executive can reason about. Cost-to-value per initiative is on the roadmap as a first-class figure on the ROI Watch Tower, next to the value states it should be judged against.
What we will ask you for
- Your current AI spend model — seats, usage, or both.
- Where agents already run, and who decided they should.
- The idea you suspect is burning tokens for nothing.
The reports behind the question
- Deloitte · AI Agents Are Only the Beginning
- McKinsey · Where AI Agents Pay Off
- McKinsey · The Cost of Intelligence