AI coding cost planning

Use cost planning for sprints where AI coding assistants are part of day-to-day delivery and leaders need a lightweight way to reason about likely usage.

Engineering managers can use this page when ordinary story-point planning does not capture how much AI-assisted exploration, prompting, generation, and review the work may require.

Create token bands for low, medium, and high AI usage, then ask the team to vote on the band alongside story points.

In Token Poker, ask participants to vote privately before reveal. A private vote reduces anchoring and makes it easier to see whether disagreement is about delivery effort, likely AI usage, or both.

Record the final story-point estimate, final token estimate, and the assumptions that changed during discussion. The assumptions are often more useful than the number because they show what the team needs to learn next.

If token estimates are high, ask whether the ticket needs extra discovery, smaller slices, clearer acceptance criteria, or a deliberate decision to spend more AI budget on the work.

Cost planning should stay honest about uncertainty. Prices, model behavior, and workflow patterns can change after planning.

Competitor and tool comparisons should stay specific. Token Poker focuses on AI-aware planning poker; other tools may be a better fit when a team only needs classic story-point voting or has different workflow requirements.