Best Practices for Using Fewer Tokens

Every message and file you send to the agent consumes tokens. Using fewer tokens means lower cost and quicker responses. Here are practical ways to stay efficient in Rakenne.

1. Keep prompts focused

• Ask one thing at a time instead of stacking many questions in a single message.
• Be specific: “Summarize the second paragraph” is better than “summarize this” when the document is long.
• Avoid repeating long context in follow-up messages; the agent already has the conversation.

2. Trim the workspace

• Remove or move files that aren’t needed for the current task. The agent can see everything in the project.
• Use small, representative samples instead of uploading entire large datasets when you’re testing or exploring.
• Keep only the documents you’re actually working on in the active workspace.

3. Start fresh when the task changes

• For a new goal or a new document set, start a new session. Old messages and references add tokens and can confuse the agent.
• Use session management to decide when to continue in the same thread and when to begin again.

4. Prefer structure over length

• When you need output in a certain format, say so up front (e.g. “Reply in bullet points” or “Use this template”).
• Shorter, structured answers often use fewer tokens than long, free-form ones.

5. Combine with context hygiene

Clean context and fewer tokens go together: less irrelevant content in the workspace and in the conversation means the model has less to read and process. See LLM context hygiene and the Session management tutorial to tie it all together.