ai-conversation-impact/tasks/05-calibrate-tokens.md
claude 0543a43816 Initial commit: AI conversation impact methodology and toolkit
CC0-licensed methodology for estimating the environmental and social
costs of AI conversations (20+ categories), plus a reusable toolkit
for automated impact tracking in Claude Code sessions.
2026-03-16 09:46:49 +00:00

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Markdown

# Task 5: Calibrate token estimates
**Plan**: reusable-impact-tooling
**Status**: DONE (hook now extracts actual token counts from transcript usage fields; falls back to heuristic; weights cache reads at 10% for energy estimates)
**Deliverable**: Updated estimation logic in `pre-compact-snapshot.sh`
## What to do
1. The current heuristic uses 4 bytes per token. Claude's tokenizer
(based on BPE) averages ~3.5-4.5 bytes per token for English prose
but varies for code, JSON, and non-English text. The transcript is
mostly JSON with embedded code and English text.
2. Estimate a better ratio by:
- Sampling a known transcript and comparing byte count to the token
count reported in API responses (if available in the transcript).
- If API token counts are present in the transcript JSON, use them
directly instead of estimating.
3. The output token ratio (currently fixed at 5% of transcript) is also
rough. Check if the transcript contains `usage` fields with actual
output token counts.
4. Update the script with improved heuristics or direct extraction.
## Done when
- Token estimates are within ~20% of actual (if verifiable) or use
actual counts from the transcript when available.