2 months ago
- Refactoring an agent-written codebase can significantly reduce token consumption for future changes.
- An experiment was conducted on a 17,155-line data access layer file, reducing it to multiple smaller files.
- Input tokens for a representative change dropped by 83% after refactoring, from 159,564 to 27,360.
- The savings are due to the agent reading less code, not because total code decreased.
- The refactoring process required human guidance, as agents were not good at refactoring.
- The experiment took about 8 hours and showed that refactoring is valuable in both time and money.
- The author suggests further research into more complex changes and continuous refactoring.