Analysis
The list price is not the price your agent pays
The model 5.7% cheaper on the price tag billed an agent session 4.4x higher. The cached-read rate decides an agent bill, and it runs from 2% to 25% of input.
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Tag / agents
10 posts tagged "agents".
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Every post tagged "agents" in the journal. Tag archives are auto-generated from post frontmatter -- one entry per unique tag across non-draft posts. Currently 10 posts share this tag. Use the category filter above to scope by editorial type.
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Analysis 02
Running many agents at once: the tax is linear, the rebate is quadratic
Every extra agent pays for its own cold prefix. But re-reading history grows with the square of turns, so splitting one job across three agents ran 17% cheaper.
Tools Howto 03
The 20x in Claude Code caching is real — it's a penalty, not a discount
A cache miss costs exactly 20x the warm read of the same history. What that does to your plan limits, which settings change it, and the number nobody can compute.
Tools Howto 04
How to actually get prompt cache hits (and why yours are missing)
Prompt caching fails silently -- no error, no warning, just a full-price bill. The floors, the breakpoint rules, and everything that quietly invalidates a cache.
Analysis 05
Routing by task complexity: what the 2026 evidence actually shows
Ten routers launched on HN in five weeks. The peer-reviewed 2026 benchmarks say they barely beat a baseline. The arithmetic that decides it, on verified rates.
Tools Howto 06
The context engineering playbook: which lever, in what order, and what each is worth
Five levers, one deployment order: which context feature to reach for by symptom, what each does to your cache and your bill, and one config that runs them all.
Analysis 07
Token savings are not dollar savings: the conversion math
Cutting 63% of an agent's tokens moved its bill 9%. Cutting 1.2% moved it 15%. The arithmetic that converts token reductions into dollars, on verified 2026 rates.
Tools Howto 08
The MCP context tax: how to stop paying for tools your agent never calls
Five MCP servers burn ~55k tokens before you ask anything. Tool search and programmatic tool calling (both now GA) cut that 85%+ — with one caveat that bites.
Tools Howto 09
Compaction: when to summarize an agent's history — and when it backfires
Anthropic's compaction API summarizes an agent's history when it hits a token threshold. How it works, the billing pass you don't see, and when it backfires.
Tools Howto 10
Context editing: cut agent token bills ~84% by clearing stale tool results
Anthropic's context editing clears stale tool results from an agent's window, cutting token use up to 84%. How it works, the config, and the prompt-cache catch.