Meta is formally ending what amounted to a tokenmaxxing incentive program for employees. In an internal announcement this week, the social media giant told workers that their performance evaluations would no longer be dependent upon how much they used AI tools, three employees who received the message tell WIRED. But as Meta workers simultaneously begin testing a new agentic AI tool known as Hatch, they say their token consumption continues to surge.

Almost a year ago, Meta had said workers would be graded on their “AI-driven impact,” which in practice meant evaluating the extent to which they used chatbots and agents to improve their day-to-day work, Business Insider reported at the time. Usage correlated with employees receiving labels such as “AI Native,” “AI First,” or “AI Enabled,” according to a lawsuit filed in July by about two dozen employees arguing that Meta violated US antidiscrimination laws when laying them off in May. (Workers on health and family leaves say they couldn’t accumulate usage and were unfairly penalized as a result; Meta has denied the allegations in the ongoing case.)

New guidance for performance reviews unveiled this week replaces references to evaluating employees based on criteria like “usage of AI” and their “AI Native” designation, with looser wording, which caveats that “these outcomes can be supported by AI or other means.” It restores Meta’s focus to grading employees on their impact, with less regard to how it is achieved. Some Meta employees tell WIRED the changes are subtle but welcome, freeing them from feeling pressured to use AI in situations in which it doesn’t make sense.

Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton tells WIRED that the updates this week aim to emphasize what has always been the case—Meta evaluates employees based on their contributions. He adds that labels such as “AI Native” were never used for performance evaluation. Engineers across the company were told this week that the company “will not use AI adoption dashboards or token counts to evaluate impact,” The Information reported on Wednesday.

For months, some Meta employees say, their colleagues prompted AI tools repeatedly—or what they viewed as frivolously—to maximize internal usage measurements, like the amount of tokens, or AI units, they consumed. The tokenmaxxing era reached a high point when one Meta worker created an internal leaderboard for tracking how much employees used AI, labeling them as, for example, a “Token Legend.” After details of the dashboard leaked, the employee took it down in April. A couple of months later, Meta moved to ration employees’ AI usage.

More recently, Meta has been encouraging—but not requiring—employees to use its most advanced AI experiment, an agentic tool that can autonomously carry out actions on a computer. Known as Hatch and similar to the viral sensation OpenClaw, it can browse the web and operate other applications. Employees have been able to test Hatch for the past several weeks on their corporate devices ahead of an expected public release.

Some employees have been hesitant to connect Hatch to their personal email, calendar, and other nonwork digital accounts because of privacy worries, as well the possibility that the AI could mess up something important, two current Meta employees familiar with the concerns tell WIRED. Meta previously ran a project that tracked employees’ keystrokes and other activity on their work devices to collect data for training AI systems. The project, which Meta has since paused, eroded many employees’ trust in the company’s AI tools, the sources say.

However, no longer having to fear being dinged on performance reviews for sitting out AI testing could help boost morale and, ultimately, rebuild trust among Meta’s workforce. Already, some employees say they have embraced Hatch for booking personal appointments and organizing their life outside of work. They describe the tool as effective, though some worry about the environmental and economic trade-offs of using large amounts of tokens and other computing resources to automate tasks.

Meta declined to comment on Hatch testing.

Though employees may no longer be intending to maximize their token usage, Hatch is still consuming more than standard chatbots and software coding assistants of yesteryear, workers say. And employees believe management still is interested in seeing them prove they can effectively wield AI tools.

If Hatch ends up boosting productivity as intended, some employees fear Meta could carry out additional job cuts. Last week, Reuters reported that Meta was gearing up for another round of major layoffs on top of the 8,000 jobs cut in May, but it called off the plans amid an increase in software bugs linked to reliance on AI and slower-than-anticipated progress on agent development. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said further mass layoffs are not expected this year.

Additional reporting by Zoë Schiffer.