Token usage for personal agents grows 34x

Token usage for AI agents has grown more than 34 times in the last year, a trend accelerating with the rollout of personal agents such as Grokbot, Duet, Muse, and Instinct. These agents operate 24-7, maintain state, and orchestrate sub-agents to manage user tasks like calendar management. Holtstock-Brown observes a shift in developer workflows from traditional UIs to MCP and API CLI, with engineers acting more like product managers or systems analysts. He predicts that the technology for long-running personal agents will unfold rapidly within three to six months. While tech insiders are adopting these tools, broader population adoption depends on distribution channels like Siri or WhatsApp rather than standalone apps. Meta’s hardware push with Muse, described as a Tamagotchi-style device, is seen as an attempt to reach older and younger demographics. Holtstock-Brown believes AI pushback will diminish as capabilities improve and expectations for speed and automation rise, similar to the normalization of computer boot times in the 1990s. He argues that personal agents will become a unilateral success, with distribution and branding becoming the primary differentiators rather than core technology.