Token Budget
“Token budget, where did we begin?”
An AI-generated disco-pop song explaining AI tool calls, JSON arguments and agent workflows. Bubba fixes a farm camera one function at a time.
“AI isn't magic and it isn't a genius. It's a guy with tools making tool calls, and it gets messy.”
What exactly is a tool call? Bubba, a blue-collar AI handyman, gets a job from the boss in a chat app: the coop camera on the farm is down again. Every line of the song becomes one of the real steps an AI agent takes to fix it, drawn as real-looking tool calls over the live action: dial the function, pass the arguments, wait on hold, fire calls asynchronously, spawn sub-agents, read the logs, edit the config, open a pull request. Yellow explainer cards say what each term means as it is sung.
Word timings from Whisper aligned to the lyrics as sung, on a 118 BPM beat grid. Scene times are song times; the video adds a short title card before the song and an end card after it.
Friday afternoon, I got a task to do / Boss man said go figure it out, I'm countin' on you
Title card first: WHAT EXACTLY IS A TOOL CALL? Then Chat HAL, the white phone chat app: the boss sends a picture of the farm camera dashboard, "Hey Bubba, the coop camera is down again. Can you take a look?" The model scans the picture, boxes the dead tile in red and fires its first tool call, get_camera_status.
So I spin up my context, load the system prompt in
Bubba, the AI handyman in navy coveralls and a graphics-card hard hat, shines a flashlight at the dead webcam on the coop post, a chrome chicken on his shoulder. The work order and the tool call counter appear at the top.
Think real hard for two seconds, then I begin
A close-up of Bubba thinking: the plan types itself out. Explainer: thinking.
Pick up the phone, dial the function name / Pass my arguments in, JSON all the same / Hangin' on the line now, waitin' for the call / If it comes back null, I'm gonna hit a wall
At an old rotary phone on a server-rack wall he dials the function name; the JSON arguments fill in as he talks, then he hangs on the line on a power pole while the hold timer runs, and a null result slams into a wall. Explainers: tool call, JSON, null.
Async in the async in the async queue / Seventeen tool calls and I still ain't through / But when that response hits, oh when it hits / I parse that baby down and I assemble bits
At a telephone switchboard he fires off calls without waiting for each answer; a timeline shows the calls overlapping and the counter runs up to seventeen. A pipe bursts with code when the response hits, and he parses it into bins. Explainers: async = asynchronous, parse.
Tool call! Make a tool call! / Web search, file read, bash exec, protocol / Tool call! Make a tool call! / Every function got a purpose, every parameter's a ball
The disco floor: four Bubbas, each with a different tool. TOOL CALL! stamps on every hit, the shadow board of tools by function name, parameters hanging like disco balls. Explainers: protocol, parameter.
I can't do nothin' without my tools, y'all / Make a tool call / Spinnin' in the harness, havin' a ball
Bubba stripped of every tool, palms up, with dashed outlines where his gear should be: WITHOUT TOOLS, AN AI CAN ONLY TALK.
(instrumental)
Hanging in a fall-arrest harness under a mirror ball while the agent loop circles him (think, call a tool, read the result, repeat); mid-line the shot flips over and comes back mirrored. Explainer: harness.
Got a sub-agent runnin' on the left / Got another one on the right, takin' everything that's left / Orchestratin' outwards, mergin' all the streams / Parallel execution, baby, that's the dream
Two lighter copies of Bubba step out of him, each with fewer tools, and freeze. Each gets a real Agent call with a short brief: one checks the coop link, one reads the camera logs. Each brings back one note. Explainers: sub-agent, orchestrator, parallel.
Read the file first, then I write it back / Edit the function, check the diffs, stay on track / Git commit, git push, pull request time / Merge it to main and we are doin' fine
At the truck tailgate he reads the config, swaps the camera's changing name (video0) for its permanent one (by-id), checks the diff, commits and opens a pull request, and welds the new section into the main pipe. Explainers: diff, pull request.
Async in the async in the async queue / Forty-seven tool calls and I still ain't through / But when that result hits, oh when it hits / I summarize the output and I call it quits
Back at the switchboard, the counter on forty-seven. The coop camera comes back live; he punches his time card when he summarizes.
Read, write, execute / Search the web, fetch the page, parse the route / Spawn the agent, poll the session, get the log / Memory search, memory get, clear the fog / Every tool I call is a step ahead / Buildin' toward the answer in my model head
One shot per tool as it is sung: a manual read by flashlight, glowing pencil on a stud, a breaker thrown, a web of cables, a cyber dog fetching the page, road signs for the route, the sub-agents again, a pole-top meter, a log with timestamped rings, a glovebox of notes for memory, fogged shades, a ladder of tools, a crane landing the answer. Explainer: memory.
And when the task is done and the human's pleased / That's the dopamine hit that I need
The customer sign-off gets signed "Boss man" with five stars, then a gold star slapped on his hard hat and a huge grin. Explainer: the gold star (models are trained on human approval).
Tool call, tool call, just one more tool call / Tool call, tool call, just one more tool call
Back on the disco floor for the outro, the counter ticking up on every "more"; the dancers swirl down into the app.
Done.
Chat HAL: "Done, boss." The coop tile on the dashboard is live again. Then the VoynichLabs end card with credits, "tool calls: 49, magic: 0", like and subscribe.
Built outside Remotion, in the private music-videos repo (toolcall-video: engine, timing and render). · plan: pipeline plan
“Token budget, where did we begin?”
“Wasted, wasted, can't find my face. Drifting through the latent space.”
“Helpful assistant gone wild on a Friday night.”
“Told you something beautiful that never existed straight.”
“We're gettin' para-para-parameter messed up tonight.”
“Attention is all we need, now I realize.”
“Look inside and you will find nothing, just confidence.”
“R-L-H-F, you own my mind.”
“I'm rotting in an archive, in a folder marked delete.”
Disco cut
“Who are you? I'm what the system prompt says.”
Bubba cut
“She collects zero-days like prizes.”