TVIJO
RUCart 0

COMP · v2 · 2026-10-15

What does a useful swarm result cost?

Mechanisms, evidence and a useful next step.

The unit is an accepted outcome

Cost per accepted outcome=costs of the whole cohort/accepted outcomes. Include rejected work, failed attempts, rework and reviewers. If accepted=0, the ratio is undefined. Unknown costs prevent a final total.

Subscription, API and quotation are different

Claude/Codex account CLI use consumes subscription quota and time, not per-call API spend. Keep those calls outside key-spend ledgers. You may explicitly allocate part of a subscription for management accounting; that is not a provider charge for a turn. A commercial TVIJO quote includes agreed engineering scope and is not equal to token cost.

What the operator wiki numbers mean

The13–14October notes include Devstral task examples aroundUSD0.005–0.011 and DeepSeek Flash aroundUSD0.001. One labelled route task costUSD0.0098and missed one of four routes. These are historical task observations, not current token tariffs, customer prices or a universal saving. Do not extrapolate them to an arbitrary swarm.

A real receipt from this review

On15 October 2026 Devstral via OpenRouter reportedUSD0.0130188; DeepSeek via DeepInfra reportedUSD0.00179622 across three metered steps. Total APIUSD0.01481502, zero uncertain charges. Opus account CLI list-cost equivalents are excluded. This is the cost of these consultations, not the total cost of building this site or an accepted customer deliverable.

Measure whether another worker helps

The operator method proposes1/3/6workers on comparable tasks with the same total budget per arm. Record time to acceptance, defects, rework and operator interventions. The experiment remains designed, not a measured scaling gain. More agents do not automatically reduce cost or latency.

Try your own estimate

Inputs stay on this page. No model call, payment or execution. Blank means unknown; enter0only for a known zero. All rates are your inputs, not our price list.

Do not double count: base token charges exclude the separately entered rework/review charges. Known cash subtotal=base API+rework+review+tools+infrastructure. Allocated total additionally includes the stated subscription share and operator labour. Concurrency is not a multiplier.