dispatch-economicslisted

Quality first, tokens second — and they align. A single agent grinding for hundreds of turns doesn't just cost more; it gets *worse* (context rot: by turn 200 it re-reads a bloated history every turn and reasons over noise). Small, fresh-context units are both cheaper and smarter. We learned this on a real bill: three days, one week's entire quota, ~5 billion cached-context tokens read. The autopsy is in [case-studies/token-burn-postmortem.md](../../case-studies/token-burn-postmortem.md). ## Rules - **One agent per ticket by default.** A fleet needs all three preconditions: 1. **Quote first** — say out loud, before launch: how many agents, which model tier each one runs on, how long, estimated tokens. 2. **Per-agent contract** — ≤100 turns, ≤5 tasks; hit a cap → save progress to disk, report, split into a fresh agent. 3. **True parallelism only** — fan out only work items with no dependencies on each other. - **Every quote names a tier per agent.** Tier sits beside agent count, duration and budget percentage — same line, not a footnote, never "we'll decide as we go". Two reasons, both load-bearing. The founder is the one paying for this compute: a quote without tiers asks him to approve a blind box. And having to write the tier down forces you to re-read your own staffing before launch — "cheapest tier" sitting next to "verify the payment logic" is a mistake you catch when you have to say it out loud. Which tier to pick: `model-tiering`. - **Verification force ≤ 1/3