Sending 0k tokens would be a smaller number again. But then it might have no idea of what it is doing. I pay my subscription and get lots of tokens on good models - if I was paying per token I might care more.

In a pay per token situation, there is a huge conflict of interest with the harness provider and the token seller being the same party ... efficiency is less profitable.

I have accused claude code of trying to run up the meter on me and it confirmed I was absolutely right.