Equation 8 · The Economics and Physical Limits of Running AI Agents at Scale
What does this equation mean?
Read the formula alongside the article passage below. Each part has a deeper page with its role in the equation, the supporting passage and nearby citations.
the step. Read the equation part by part below; each part has a contextual explanation and a link to its mathematical background.
Read it piece by piece
How to interpret it
Read this expression with the definitions, units, and assumptions supplied by the article.
What the article says around this equation
Because the API is stateless between calls, step i in the loop must include, as ordinary input, everything that made it into the transcript through step i-1 : the tool results, the intermediate reasoning, the earlier outputs. Call the amount a single step permanently adds to that growing transcript — roughly plus , since both the new material a step introduces and the output it produces become part of what every later step has to resend. Without caching, step i ’s input is not just + ; it is + plus the accumulated weight of every prior step, (i-1) :
Sources cited in the article section
These citations give research context. Read each source to check which claims it supports.
Return to The Economics and Physical Limits of Running AI Agents at Scale