20,000 Jev decisions cost $0.84 versus $600 on a frontier model
The author breaks down agent costs, noting 97% of the bill comes from the 4% of events that need a writing model, so the goal is fewer escalations to the expensive model rather than making every model cheaper.
THE CHEAPEST PART OF AN AI AGENT MAY BE THE PART MAKING ALL THE DECISIONS. 20,000 decisions on Jev: $0.84. The same workload on a frontier LLM: $600. Sounds like the end of expensive AI agents. It isn’t. In this setup, 97% of the bill comes from the 4% of events that actually need a writing model. That changes the optimization target. Don’t make every model cheaper. Make fewer events reach the expensive model. Cheap intelligence scales the decisions. Good architecture controls the escalations.
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