How Agents Read Code: The Hidden Token Cost

AI code agents operate with fundamentally different cognitive models than humans, relying on primitive tools like grep and glob instead of IDE navigation and pattern recognition. This architectural difference creates a 7.5x token multiplier for equivalent features, revealing that design patterns optimized for human readability become liabilities in agent-driven development. As AI-assisted coding becomes mainstream, understanding this shift is critical for rethinking how we organize and structure code.