A bar chart showing the electricity use of several daily activities with the subtitle "The 'typical query' is not a useful way to think about coding agents' energy use." The bar for a 'typical ChatGPT query' is not even visible. My median Claude Code session is somewhere between the average US household per minute and toasting bread for three minutes. My median day with Claude Code is something like running a dishwasher.
Whenever I read discourse on AI energy/water use that focuses on the "median query," I can't help but feel misled. Coding agents like Claude Code send hundreds of longer-than-median queries every session, and I run dozens of sessions a day.
On my blog: www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01...