NVIDIA's AgentBaton cuts agent API costs 65.9% with a single model handoff
dair_ai · x · 2026-10-30
An NVIDIA-led paper introduces AgentBaton, a lightweight detector that learns when to hand off from a capable model to a cheaper one based on recurring patterns in task progress.
- Efficient-to-capable handoffs save little or nothing; capable-to-efficient handoffs at the right stage cut cost substantially.
- One handoff per task, median check latency of 338 ms on one H100 — easy to add to an existing agent loop.
- Across 11 model pairs and two benchmarks, API costs drop 65.9% on average while largely preserving accuracy, with gains up to 8.8 points over capable-only execution.
The authors suggest testing a single capable-to-cheap handoff before building a full model router.
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