Every agent run on this server, and what it costs

The same agent, on two different models

The Scout does two jobs in one run. First it reads widely and cheaply, looking for anything worth a second look. Then it looks for a connection between two things nobody told it to compare. Those are different jobs, so they run on different models. The cheap model reads about seventy times more text for about two per cent of the money. Paying for the expensive model only where it is needed is the whole design, and the table below is the proof.

Scout · reading, then connecting

	Runs	Input read	Cost
The cheap read · Haikuclaude-haiku-4-5-20251001	87	1.55M	$0.61
The connection · Fable 5claude-fable-5	28	21K	$31.82

Haiku Fable 5

What each kind of model costs

Sorted by price, almost none of the money goes to the model that does most of the reading. Look at the first row: nearly three hundred steps used no model at all. Those are ordinary code, with no AI in them, and they are counted here on purpose. Leaving them out would suggest that everything on this server is a language model. That is not true, and it would be the more flattering story.

One run costs anywhere from a fraction of a cent to a dollar

The cheapest step costs about a hundred and forty times less than the most expensive one. That is not waste — the jobs are not the same size. Packaging a blog post is small and repetitive, and costs about what you would expect. Looking for connections is the most expensive thing that runs here. It has to hold a dozen threads at once and say something new, and it does that twenty-eight times.

Cost of a single run, step by step

	Runs	Average	Most expensive run
scout_synthesisclaude-fable-5	28	$1.14	$1.80
sysadminclaude-sonnet-5	16	$0.61	$0.99
wire_triageclaude-sonnet-5	4	$0.44	$0.58
chief_shadowclaude-sonnet-5	4	$0.23	$0.38
writer_draftclaude-sonnet-5	12	$0.11	$0.20
directorclaude-sonnet-5	140	$0.08	$0.51
content_agentclaude-sonnet-4-6	276	$0.02	$0.03
marketer_agent.packageclaude-sonnet-4-6	270	$0.0082	$0.0099
scout_walkclaude-haiku-4-5-20251001	87	$0.0070	$0.01
ask.explorerclaude-haiku-4-5-20251001	1	$0.0015	$0.0015
marketer_agent.extractclaude-haiku-4-5-20251001	276	$0.0006	$0.0007

Haiku Sonnet Fable 5

Most of what the models read, they had read before

The agents read the same long set of instructions at the start of every run. That text is paid for once, then read again at a fraction of the price — the rows below call that the cache. It is the reason the bill runs to two figures instead of four. It also explains something odd in the totals at the top of this page. The reading figure there counts only text paid at full price. The true amount read is much higher.

4.3× more read from the cache than read at full price

Busy months and expensive months are not the same months

May was by far the busiest month and one of the cheapest. The blog agents were running in bulk, making lots of small, cheap calls. July and August are quieter and cost far more, because the work changed. There were fewer runs, and each one asked a better model to think harder. So how busy a month was tells you very little about what it cost. That is why both columns are here, and why each has its own scale.

What the names in the tables mean

The names in the tables are the steps each agent logs, not the agents themselves. Several agents log more than one kind of step, and one name on this list is not an agent at all.

The logged name, and who is behind it

The logged name	Who that is	What the step does
ask.explorer	Ask assistant	a visitor asking a question on a solution page
chief_shadow	Wire Editor	the Wire Editor marking its own shortlist afterwards
content_agent	Content agent	the blog agents drafting from a code change
director	Director	a turn of conversation, usually started by a message from me
ghost.create_draft	not on the roster	not an agent — the blog itself accepting a post
marketer_agent.extract	Marketer agent	pulling descriptors out of a finished draft
marketer_agent.package	Marketer agent	turning those descriptors into titles and tags
scout_synthesis	Scout	the same run looking for connections, on the expensive model
scout_walk	Scout	the Scout's cheap first read, looking widely for anything worth a look
sysadmin	Sysadmin	the 06:20 health check, reading the server end to end
wire_triage	Wire Editor	the Wire Editor sorting inbound items
writer_draft	Writer	one attempt at a field note from a claimed lead