Flight API founder: a third of agent use cases would work better as cron jobs
OtherwiseWeekend2222 · reddit · 2026-09-15
The founder of flightpowers ($10/mo flight & hotel price API) shares what customers actually run: about a third of agent use cases don't need an agent. The pattern that works is boring — a schedule, fixed routes, one call per route, a threshold, a message; one customer fires the same 18 round-trip searches daily with zero model decisions, and his own scanner priced 111 routes with the 'agent' part being one summary sentence. The pattern that burns money: tool-calling loops choosing which dates to search — 40 combinations to answer a 6-date question, eating his free tier's 150 daily backend searches before lunch. Agents earn their keep on the last mile: judging whether $169 is cheap for October using Google's tracked price range. His rule: deterministic fan-out, model on interpretation.
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