Figure 19.2: Why an agent’s cost compounds rather than adds
Figure 19.2 Why an agent's cost compounds rather than adds. Every loop step re-sends
the whole conversation so far, so each bar re-pays for a stable prefix plus all the
history accumulated to that point; only the thin top slice (in accent) is genuinely
new. The bars climb like a staircase, and a ten-step task costs far more than ten
times a single message.
