Equation 3 · Part 1 · From Origins to Frontier: A History of Claude Code and Agentic Development Tools
Symbol t
What this part means
the time or time index used in this relationship.
Its job in the formula
t is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.
Full expression→Symbol t→Article meaning
Where the article explains it
where is the length of task, measured in human-hours, that a frontier agent could complete autonomously with 50% reliability at time t .
The passage around this formula
where is the length of task, measured in human-hours, that a frontier agent could complete autonomously with 50% reliability at time t . This is an empirical regression over six years of a specific evaluation methodology, not a law of nature, and METR’s own reporting is explicit that the trend could bend in either direction; it is included here because it is the clearest available answer to “how would you know if agentic coding tools were actually getting more autonomous,” as distinct from “how would you know if a vendor said so.”
Learn the underlying idea
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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Sources cited in the article section
- [5] SWE-bench: Can Language Models Resolve Real-World GitHub Issues? ↗
- [14] Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Software Tasks ↗
These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.