Beyond Benchmarks: Speed and Cost Dictate Agent Survival in Production
RachelVT42 · x · 2026-08-02
The author points out that many model picks are made solely on leaderboard scores, but they often die on real workloads. What truly decides whether an agent actually runs in a business is inference speed and cost.
The author shares their experience running a fleet of agents for 'CEO work' using Grok 4.5. The model was chosen not for its benchmark dominance, but because its tokens are cheap and fast enough that the agent can be always-on rather than rationed per query. When inference is affordable and snappy, the product design shifts from 'assessing which task deserves a model' to 'asking how many tasks can be handed over'.
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