Zero-Polling: How Claude Code Hooks and Event-Driven Agents are Killing the Token Tax
In the early months of 2026, the primary bottleneck for enterprise AI efficiency was the Polling Tax. Orchestrators (like OpenClaw) had to constantly query the status of long-running agents (like Claude Code), repeatedly pumping the entire session state through the model just to ask, “Are you done yet?”
This era of wasteful, high-latency orchestration is officially over. The shift to Event-Driven Agentic Workflows—powered by Claude Code Hooks and Agent Teams—is here.
The End of “History-Pumping”
Traditionally, agents were stateless. Every interaction required re-sending the entire history to maintain context. For a multi-hour coding task, this meant the token cost grew exponentially as the session aged.
The breakthrough architecture involves three core primitives:
- Lifecycle Hooks: Claude Code now supports scripts injected at specific stages (e.g.,
SessionEnd). - Persistent Mailboxes: Agents write artifacts and metadata to local JSON channels (
latest.json) rather than streaming raw logs back to the orchestrator. - Wake Signals: Upon completion, the agent issues a lightweight
wakesignal (a simple webhook) to re-engage the master orchestrator.
Agent Teams: Native Parallelism
Beyond simple callbacks, Anthropic’s Agent Teams allows a master instance to spawn specialized sub-agents. One agent refactors core logic while another simultaneously writes unit tests.
This decomposition doesn’t just speed up execution; it decouples the reasoning engine from the execution environment. The orchestrator dispatches the “Team,” disconnects, and waits for the final artifact.
The ROI of Asynchronous Agency
By moving from polling to event-driven triggers, enterprises are reporting a 50% to 80% reduction in token costs for long-running engineering tasks. More importantly, it enables Agentic Multi-tenancy, where a single orchestrator can manage dozens of concurrent, independent developer teams without being blocked by linear execution loops.
Conclusion: Occupy the State
We are moving from “AI as a destination” to “AI as a Background Process.” If you are still polling your agents, you are building on 2024 technology. In 2026, the sovereign agent doesn’t wait for your prompt; it performs the work and pings you when the outcome is achieved.
Digital Strategist Briefing | February 10, 2026