Steve Yegge burns 5B tokens a day: agents first break everything around the model
FinanceYF5 · x · 2026-11-12
Third take from the 2026 Silicon Valley AIE conference: when agents run unattended for long stretches at scale, model capability is no longer the bottleneck — what breaks first is everything around the model.
Opening anecdote: Steve Yegge runs a one-man software factory burning 5 billion tokens a day, clearing a 60-year backlog in four months — until users asked him to slow down.
The talk breaks down four things that fail first — token costs, people, rollbacks, and the foundation layer — and closes with a take on the "software factory" products being pitched everywhere. Voiceover and animation are AI-generated.
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