The true cost of an accepted result cannot be determined

The cost of an accepted result has two components: agent expenses and the time during which a developer actively contributed their expertise.

If a task was assigned to a developer for six hours, that no longer means six hours of their work. The agent may have spent five hours implementing it while the person spent ten minutes clarifying the brief and another twenty checking the result. The cost calculation should include the agent’s work and those thirty minutes of expert involvement; the rest was waiting.

A result produced by a cheap model may ultimately be expensive if it requires reruns, micromanagement, manual fixes, and several review cycles. Conversely, an expensive model may cost less if its one-shot result is accepted after a quick check. The visible subscription price is not the cost of the result.

Token usage or a share of the subscription must be counted, while only the developer’s active involvement should be recorded separately: briefing, expert decisions, rejections, review, and manual corrections. Neither the task’s elapsed time nor the time spent waiting for the agent can replace this calculation.