[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"branding":3,"analytics":7,"article-study-finds-coding-agents-waste-up-to-23-percent-of-cost":10,"sections":35},{"siteName":4,"siteTagline":5,"publisherName":4,"contactEmail":6},"The Revision","Tech news, decoded.","editor@therevision.news",{"gaMeasurementId":8,"adsenseClientId":9},"G-ZW2MV82GYR","ca-pub-8533917693782264",{"article":11},{"id":12,"slug":13,"title":14,"dek":15,"body_md":16,"tags_json":17,"published_at":18,"created_at":19,"updated_at":20,"status":21,"review_note":22,"review_notes":23,"image_url":22,"persona_id":22,"persona_name":22,"section":24,"tags":25,"sources":30,"feedback":34,"feedback_at":22,"cost_usd":34,"total_tokens":34},8294,"study-finds-coding-agents-waste-up-to-23-percent-of-cost","Study Finds Coding Agents Waste Up to 23 Percent of Cost","A study of Claude Code and Mini-SWE-Agent finds redundant work eats up to 22.75 percent of task cost, and developer-written skills cut it most effectively.","Coding agents like Claude Code burn real money on work they have already done.\n\nResearchers analyzed 1,200 coding-agent trajectories from Claude Code and Mini-SWE-Agent across four configurations on the SWE-bench Verified benchmark, then tested fixes on more than 10,000 additional trajectories from held-out SWE-bench Verified and Pro tasks. They identified three recurring cost-inefficient behaviors: agents re-running searches that had already surfaced the needed files (subsumed retrieval), generating near-duplicate scripts to solve the same sub-problem, and re-running full test suites when a narrower check would do. These habits show up in 79 to 98 percent of tasks and account for as much as 22.75 percent of a task's total cost.\n\nThe researchers tested three fixes: structure-aware retrieval tools, skills the agent writes for itself from past runs, and skills written by human developers. Structure-aware retrieval sometimes backfired, pushing costs up by as much as 28.14 percent by changing how agents delegated work. Developer-written skills won clearly, cutting cost by up to 41.73 percent, roughly double what agent-generated skills achieved, because humans wrote general-purpose guidance instead of narrow, trace-specific notes.\n\nIt is a useful reminder that the fix for an AI agent's bad habits is still, for now, a person telling it what to stop doing.","[\"coding-agents\",\"ai-agents\",\"llm-costs\",\"claude-code\"]","2026-09-28T04:00:00.000Z","2026-09-28T22:15:04.943Z","2026-09-28T22:15:11.826Z","published",null,[],"ai",[26,27,28,29],"coding-agents","ai-agents","llm-costs","claude-code",[31],{"name":32,"url":33},"arXiv cs.AI","https:\u002F\u002Farxiv.org\u002Fabs\u002F2609.30725",0,{"sections":36},[37,41,46,51,56,61,66,71,76,81,86,91,96,101],{"name":38,"slug":24,"count":39,"latest_published_at":40},"AI",4900,"2026-09-28T17:44:43.000Z",{"name":42,"slug":43,"count":44,"latest_published_at":45},"Security","security",766,"2026-09-28T15:35:23.000Z",{"name":47,"slug":48,"count":49,"latest_published_at":50},"Policy","policy",405,"2026-09-28T17:00:51.000Z",{"name":52,"slug":53,"count":54,"latest_published_at":55},"Deals","deals",269,"2026-09-28T17:42:46.000Z",{"name":57,"slug":58,"count":59,"latest_published_at":60},"Hardware","hardware",191,"2026-09-28T15:45:00.000Z",{"name":62,"slug":63,"count":64,"latest_published_at":65},"Science","science",154,"2026-09-28T13:19:18.000Z",{"name":67,"slug":68,"count":69,"latest_published_at":70},"Consumer Tech","consumer-tech",139,"2026-09-28T17:09:47.000Z",{"name":72,"slug":73,"count":74,"latest_published_at":75},"Software","software",91,"2026-09-25T20:55:00.000Z",{"name":77,"slug":78,"count":79,"latest_published_at":80},"Dev Tools","dev-tools",87,"2026-09-28T16:11:42.000Z",{"name":82,"slug":83,"count":84,"latest_published_at":85},"Startups","startups",80,"2026-09-28T17:50:28.000Z",{"name":87,"slug":88,"count":89,"latest_published_at":90},"General","general",49,"2026-09-28T16:44:57.000Z",{"name":92,"slug":93,"count":94,"latest_published_at":95},"Gaming","gaming",48,"2026-09-25T18:35:21.000Z",{"name":97,"slug":98,"count":99,"latest_published_at":100},"Reviews","reviews",31,"2026-09-28T14:31:34.000Z",{"name":102,"slug":103,"count":104,"latest_published_at":105},"How-To","how-to",6,"2026-06-16T09:00:00.000Z"]