Agent cost and latency

Each step of an agent costs money and time: every source it reads, every tool call and every model answer. A chain that looks elegant on paper can take a minute and cost a lot per case once it runs thousands of times.

The most powerful model is not always the right one: a smaller model is often enough for sorting or drafting, and a simple rule or script is faster and cheaper for a deterministic step. Volume peaks multiply every excess.

Start from the budget and the response time the business expects, pick the smallest model that handles the task, remove steps that do not change the outcome and check the cost of a busy day before going to production.

In the reports of your games, every answer linked to this skill counts: the skill is shown as acquired from 80% of correct answers, and in progress from 50%.