Agent production quality is more than task completion, speed and cost

Antony_Richards · reddit · 2026-07-21

The author argues that most people build a **3-dimensional agent in a 30-dimensional space**: task completion, speed, and cost are only a tiny slice of what matters in production. The post proposes several under-measured dimensions: - Knowing when the agent doesn’t know, where a refusal can be better than a hallucination. - Detecting missing events, such as jobs that silently failed overnight. - Staying consistent under rephrasing. - Holding its position when challenged. - Improving over time, not just performing well today. The question is essentially: what dimensions should we actually evaluate when agents go live?

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