Token Economics

Definition

Token economics is Blackridge's report model for model-call cost, tokens, waste, modeled opportunity, confidence, and recommended actions.

Why It Matters

Token count alone does not explain spend. Token economics separates observed cost, estimated cost, realized waste, modeled opportunity, unknown/unattributed cost, and confidence.

How Blackridge Represents It

Blackridge turns request-level economics evidence into the assessment model: observed spend, realized waste, modeled opportunity, attribution coverage, unknown cost, evidence grades, and recommended actions. The investigation API serves that model to the UI and export surfaces. The report separates what happened from what might be saved if behavior changes.

Example

A typical assessment starts with a bounded event window and produces a report that Finance can inspect and Engineering can reproduce. Customer docs include the field-level contract exposed by the investigation API and exports.

Common Mistakes

• Treating modeled opportunity as proven savings.
• Treating imported vendor costs as normalized invoice truth when currency/conversion metadata is incomplete.
• Ignoring data_quality and confidence ranges.

Related Docs

• Glossary
• Event Schema
• Report Fields