>>So how these companies and people manage to use these absurd amount of tokens is a mystery to me.

Absolutely!

I know some colleagues who are routinely spending thousands of dollars worth of tokens, I can't see to even max out the subscription limits even if Im working all the time. Curiously enough their output is lower too.

Agents could work for a long time and burn a lot of tokens if you give them a task that is too hard for them. After enough time, if they don't give up, the slot machine could spit out a working solution.

Personally I find it faster to figure out the hard parts by myself and then give a few smaller tasks to Claude.