Equation 6 · Comparing the Main Approaches to Claude Code and Agentic Development Tools
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the fixed cost. Read the equation part by part below; each part has a contextual explanation and a link to its mathematical background.
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The genuine trade this design makes can be stated without hand-waving. Suppose a task requires n discrete tool calls before it is complete, and let g be the number of those calls that execute between one human checkpoint and the next — the granularity of approval. A tool that asks before every action sets g=1 ; a tool that asks once for an entire plan, or once for an entire background task, sets g close to n . At a fixed cost c for each checkpoint a person has to evaluate, total interaction cost scales with the number of checkpoints:
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