Cut coding agent token use with better tool output

The New Stack · 1 month ago · 11

Coding teams can spend many AI-coding-agent tokens on tool output because verbose formats repeat labels and structure before any code is written. The article cites a 25-issue comparison where TOON used 49% fewer characters than pretty-printed JSON and 33% fewer than minified JSON. The change is switching tool responses from default JSON to a schema-first, row-based format like TOON when the agent must read many records with the same fields, reducing repeated scaffolding in the context sent to the model.