Agents get attention because they sound autonomous. But autonomy is the expensive part. Before reaching for an agent, the real question is whether the loop of decide, act, and verify is cheap enough to be worth automating.
If verification is slow or expensive, a single bad decision compounds. If verification is fast, the agent can recover quickly and the loop becomes useful.
When agents earn their cost
- Verification is fast and cheap
- The space of next actions is small
- Wrong steps are easy to undo
- The task is repetitive across projects
Reach for an agent when the loop is cheap. Otherwise, a single well-shaped prompt still wins on most tasks.
