Equation 1 · The Economics and Physical Limits of Running AI Agents at Scale
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Call this fixed component . It is paid once per step, in full, every step, for as long as the loop runs — the toll is the same on step one hundred as on step one, whether or not that step’s own contribution to the task is large or trivial. Over many steps, a workload that defines five tools and uses one on a given turn is still paying the fixed tax for all five, every turn; narrowing the tool set narrows , but nothing the model does at inference time avoids it.
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