TokWatt energy database: one AI coding-agent task uses 440 times a chat answer

TokWatt, an open database posted to arXiv by Abderaouf Bahi of Chadli Bendjedid University in Algeria, collects 134 published estimates of AI inference energy from 13 sources (2023–2026) and rescales them to a common boundary covering the server plus facility overhead such as cooling. Its reference values are 0.34 watt-hours for a short chat answer (range 0.16–0.99 Wh), 4.7 Wh for a reasoning answer, 124 Wh for a short video clip and 150 Wh for one task handed to a coding agent, about 440 times a short chat answer. Five independent estimates for default production chat systems such as ChatGPT and Gemini agree within a factor of 1.8; the author notes that 12 of the 19 reference values rest on a single source and that the values leave out idle capacity and the energy used to make the hardware.