Batching means running independent tool calls together in a single step instead of one at a time.

Why it matters

Independent tool calls can run in parallel. Doing them serially multiplies round-trips and output tokens — each step has fixed overhead, so ten one-call steps cost far more than one ten-call step. A low “batching score” (tool calls per step) is a sign of avoidable round-trips.

How to improve

Ask for related work together. “Read these four files” lets the agent batch the reads; “read file A… now B… now C” forces four steps.
Prefer fewer, larger edits over many tiny ones when they’re part of the same change.
Delegate breadth. When a task fans out, hand independent branches to subagents so the parallelism is explicit and the round-trips collapse.