A counterintuitive bit of product advice for agentic software: use the worst model you can get away with.

· Bits and Bobs 3/17/26
  • A counterintuitive bit of product advice for agentic software: use the worst model you can get away with.
    • If you do, then every model that is better will definitely work.
    • You can more easily switch between models, and potentially save a lot of money.
    • If you see what you can do with the best models, you build systems that require the best models.
    • But if you make a system that is resilient to low quality, you can make robust, cheap solutions.
    • Kind of like trading opex for capex.
    • A little bit of cleverness in your structure up front saves you ongoing opex on more expensive models.
    • The larger you scale, the more this saves.