Agent costs often come from pointless loops, not the model
FounderWithCode · reddit · 2026-09-01
The author argues that the expensive part of an AI agent is often pointless loops in the workflow, such as searching the same page multiple times or verifying deterministic results. Before switching to cheaper models, developers should optimize workflows by caching tool results, maintaining explicit state, capping retries, and separating deterministic checks from LLM tasks.
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