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A comment on We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler. Parent comment

Re:We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler by willsmith72 on Thursday February 05, 2026 @07:11PM (#46907314)
this doesn't add up. the 20k is in API costs. people talk about CC losing money because it's way more efficient than the API. I.e. the same work with efficient use of CC might have cost ~$5k.

but regardless, hiring is difficult and high-end talent is limited. If the costs were anywhere close to equivalent, the agents are a no-brainer

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Re:We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler by majormajor on Thursday February 05, 2026 @08:27PM (#46907845)
CC hits their APIs, And internally I'm sure Anthropic tracks those calls, which is what they seem to be referencing here. What exactly did Anthropic do in this test to have "inefficient use of CC" vs your proposed "efficient use of CC"?

Or do you mean that if an external user replicated this experience they might get billed less than $20k due to CC being sold at lower rates than per-API-call metered billing?

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Re:We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler by NitpickLawyer on Friday February 06, 2026 @06:27AM (#46911599)
> hiring is difficult and high-end talent is limited.

Not only that, but firing talent is also a pain. You can't "hire" 10 devs for 2 weeks, and fire them afterwards. At least you can't keep doing that, people talk and no one would apply.

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