Cycle Investment

Token consumption, development time and squad efficiency for the ECP Emps product.

Total Development Time

1h 02min
Agent Execution (pure)
Sum of durations reported by the 18 agents

1h 53min

Lead Time without HITL

Agents + orchestration + explore + docs generation

2h 18min

Lead Time with HITL

Includes 25min of human review (12 HITLs)

Breakdown: Without HITL (1h 37min)

Agents (pure compute) 1h 02min

Explore / Research ~15min

Orchestration + file ops + docs ~20min

Breakdown: HITL (25min)

HITL #1 (review + docs format) ~8min

HITLs #2–#6 (Discovery review) ~5min

HITLs #7–#10 (review + adjustments) ~7min

HITLs #11–#12 (review + adjustments) ~5min

Lead Time by Stage

Times relative to T+0:00 (session start). ● = development ● = HITL pause (human review)

Stage	Start	End	Duration	Gantt (scale: 2h)	Type
Setup & Validation	0:00	0:14	14min		DEV
Phase 01 — Strategic	0:14	0:26	12min		DEV
HTML docs generation (Phase 01)	0:26	0:36	10min		DEV
⏸ HITL #1 (review + approval)	0:36	0:44	8min		HITL
Phase 02 — Discovery	0:44	1:14	30min		DEV
HTML docs generation (Phase 02)	1:14	1:19	5min		DEV
⏸ HITLs #2–#6 (review + approval)	1:19	1:24	5min		HITL
Phase 03 — Delivery	1:24	1:50	26min		DEV
HTML docs generation (Phase 03)	1:50	1:53	3min		DEV
⏸ HITLs #7–#10 (review + adjustments)	1:53	2:00	7min		HITL
Phase 04 — Operations	※ see note	—	13min	Exceeds the 2h scale — details in table below
⏸ HITLs #11–#12 (review + adjustments)	※	—	5min	—

Lead Time Summary

Stage	Start (without HITL)	End (without HITL)	Duration (without HITL)	Start (with HITL)	End (with HITL)	Duration (with HITL)	HITL pause
Setup & Validation	0:00	0:14	14min	0:00	0:14	14min	—
Phase 01 — Strategic	0:14	0:36	22min	0:14	0:44	30min	8min
Phase 02 — Discovery	0:36	1:11	35min	0:44	1:24	40min	5min
Phase 03 — Delivery	1:11	1:40	29min	1:24	2:00	36min	7min
Phase 04 — Operations	1:40	1:53	13min	2:00	2:18	18min	5min
TOTAL CYCLE	0:00	1:53	1h 53min	0:00	2:18	2h 18min	25min

HITL Efficiency

Total time with HITL2h 18min

Total time without HITL1h 53min

Time in HITL pause25min

% of time in HITL18%

% of time in development82%

Lead Time by Phase (without HITL)

Phase 01 — Strategic 22min

Phase 02 — Discovery 35min (longest)

Phase 03 — Delivery 29min

Phase 04 — Operations 13min (shortest)

Setup + Validation 14min

Total Token Consumption

777.862

Total Tokens

187

Tool Uses

Agents Executed

141

Available Skills

Consumption by Phase

Setup / Explore

15%

~120K 15% ~15min

01 — Strategic

19%

146K 19% 11m 16s

02 — Discovery

37%

286K 37% 21m 38s

03 — Delivery

21%

162K 21% 19m 19s

04 — Operations

63K 8% 9m 57s

Distribution by Agent

778K

TOKENS TOTAL

Product Manager (4 sub)19%
Product Owner (3 sub)14%
Product Designer (3 sub)17%
Trio PM+Designer+PO5%
Software Architect (4 sub)5%
Backend Developer (4 sub)7%
Frontend Developer (4 sub)9%
Operations (6 sub)8%
Explore / Research16%

Detail by Agent and Sub-agent

Phase	Agent / Sub-agent	Tokens	Tools	Duration	Skills
Setup	Explore: Squad Structure	~30.000	—	—	—
	Explore: PM Sub-agents	~25.000	—	—	—
	Explore: Templates and Docs	~30.000	—	—	—
Phase 01	🧑‍💼 Product Manager	4 sequential sub-agents · 16 skills
	Market Research	34.172	3	4m 30s	4
	Product Vision	44.498	9	3m 19s	4
	Product Strategy	40.592	3	1m 48s	4
	Metrics	27.137	1	1m 39s	4
Phase 02	Explore: PO + Designer defs	~35.000	—	—	—
	📋 Product Owner (Moment 1)	RICE Prioritization
	Epic → opportunity-prioritizer	43.655	7	2m 29s	1
	🎨 Product Designer	3 stages: ideation, low-fi, high-fi · 16 skills
	UX → ideation-facilitator	51.035	7	3m 26s	2
	UX → low-fi-prototyper	28.344	2	3m 17s	1
	UX → high-fi-prototyper	54.580	3	6m 51s	1
	📋 Product Owner (Moment 2)	Epics + Features + BDD Stories
	Epic + Feature + Story	67.562	11	3m 19s	6
Phase 02	🤝 Trio (PM + Designer + PO)	40.582	7	2m 15s	1
Phase 03	Explore: Delivery agent defs	~30.000	—	—	—
	🏛 Software Architect	Structure, configs, DB schema, migrations, seed, shared · 17 skills
	System Design → repo-scaffolder + data-modeling + adr-writer	42.000*	35	~5m	5
	🔧 Backend Developer	10 modules · 35 endpoints · routes + services + schemas · 16 skills
	API → api-builder + auth-implementer + error-handler	30.000*	26	~3m 30s	4
	Persistence → schema-builder + migration-manager + repository	21.234*	18	~2m 30s	4
	💻 Frontend Developer	12 pages + 8 components + hooks + services · 16 skills
	Implementation → design-to-code + component-builder + state-mgmt	69.245	41	8m 18s	5
Phase 04	⚙ Operations (CI/CD + SLOs + GMUD + A/B)	39.452	11	7m 35s	10
Phase 04	⚙ Operations (Dashboard Builder)	23.774	3	2m 22s	3
TOTAL	10 agents · 36 sub-agents	777.862	187+	1h 02min	141

Note on Phase 03: The Architect and Backend Developer were executed in a single agent call (93,234 tokens / 79 tool uses / 11m01s) that created the entire repository structure + the 30 backend module files. The values with * are proportional distribution estimates within that execution: Architect (~45%), Backend API (~32%), Backend Persistence (~23%).

Agents Not Triggered in This Cycle

Agent	Sub-agents	Skills	Reason
🤖 AI Engineer	Chatbot Builder, Agent Builder, RAG Pipeline, AI Guardrails	16	Product has no AI features in MVP (categorization by MCC rules, not ML)
🧪 QA	Shift-Left, Automation, Exploratory, Quality Intelligence	16	Simplified quality gate in this cycle; tests included in Architect scaffolding

Execution Timeline

Pre-flight check + Input validation

Orchestrator · validate-inputs.mjs

Explore: Squad structure + sub-agents

3 research agents

~85K tokens

Phase 01: PM → Market Research → Vision → Strategy → Metrics

4 sequential sub-agents · 11m 16s

146,399 tokens

HITL #1 — Strategic Context Approval

HTML docs generation + human review

Explore: PO + Designer definitions

1 research agent

~35K tokens

Phase 02: PO RICE → Designer Ideation → Low-fi → High-fi → PO Backlog → Trio 4 Risks

6 agents (4 sequential + 2 parallel) · 21m 38s

285,758 tokens

HITLs #2–#6 — Discovery Approval

HTML docs generation + human review

Explore: Delivery agents definitions

1 research agent

~30K tokens

Phase 03: Architect Scaffold (68 files) → Frontend (12 pages)

2 sequential agents · 19m 19s

162,479 tokens

HITLs #7–#10 — Delivery Approval

HTML docs generation + folder adjustment + human review

Phase 04: Ops (7 JSONs) ∥ Dashboard (HTML)

2 parallel agents · 9m 57s

63,226 tokens

HITLs #11–#12 — Final Approval + Adjustments

Folder adjustment (specs → 00-specs/) + human review

Top 5 Most Expensive Agents

🥇 #1

Architect — repo-scaffolder (68 files)

93.234 79 11m01s

🥈 #2

Frontend Dev — 12 React pages

69.245 41 8m18s

🥉 #3

PO — epics + features + BDD stories

67.562 11 3m19s

Designer — high-fi prototype HTML

54.580 3 6m51s

Designer — ideation (hypotheses + map)

51.035 7 3m26s

Efficiency Metrics

Code files

HTML doc pages

Navigable prototypes

HITLs approved

Tokens per Artifact

Tokens / code file~11,439

Tokens / API endpoint~22,225

Tokens / React page~5,770

Tokens / SQLite table~7,770

Time per Delivery

Minutes / code file~0.9 min

Minutes / API endpoint~1.8 min

Minutes / React page~1.6 min

Minutes / HTML prototype~5.0 min