Token Budget Policy

Data artifactOrchestrationOrchestration & Toolsarc:TokenBudgetPolicy

A configuration artifact stating per-task-category token, step and cost-per-interaction budgets beyond which an agent run must degrade, stop or be escalated.

Responsibility. Declares the resource budgets agent runs must respect.

Also known as: Cost budget, Complexity threshold, Coding-agent resource budget

Direct neighbourhood (hover for relationship types)

Relationships

configures structural

Design guidance

SHOULD set budgets per task category, since simple and complex tasks have fundamentally different efficiency profiles.

Quantitative guidance

As stated by the sources; verify before use.

A 500-token context limit suited to FAQ queries could cripple document analysis needing ~2,000 tokens of retrieved content (Ch3.10).

Classification

Quality attributes: Cost efficiency
Risks mitigated: Unbounded token consumption on unsolvable problems

Sources

Ch3.10: T. Nguyen, "Efficiency Metrics," in Mastering Agentic AI Systems: Guide for the NVIDIA NCP-AAI Exam, 1st ed. 2026, ch. 3.10. ISBN: 9798244538229.
Ch10.5: T. Nguyen, "Human-over-the-Loop," in Mastering Agentic AI Systems: Guide for the NVIDIA NCP-AAI Exam, 1st ed. 2026, ch. 10.5. ISBN: 9798244538229.