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Equation 7 · Part 5 · Comparing the Main Approaches to Claude Code and Agentic Development Tools

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Interaction cost≈ng c\text{Interaction cost} \approx \frac{n}{g}\,c
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What this part means

Approximately equal to; the equality is not exact.

Its job in the formula

Approximately equal to; the equality is not exact.

The passage around this formula

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: Interaction cost≈ng c\text{Interaction cost} \approx \frac{n}{g}\,c. Now suppose each individual tool call has some small, independent probability p of being consequential and wrong in a way a reviewer would…

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A variable is a named place for a value. Its letter is a local label: x can mean position in one formula and a data point in another.

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