I built a plugin that routes coding agent subtasks to cheaper models, and measured it (1.24x cheaper, same quality)

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This is my own project, free and MIT licensed. I wanted to know whether sending the cheap parts of a coding agent session to a smaller model saves money without changing the result, so I built a small plugin and measured it instead of guessing. A hook adds a routing card to the session. The chat model grades each task into one of 7 classes and delegates bulk work (reading, mechanical edits, test loops) to a worker at a cheaper model and lower effort. The model and effort you picked stay a ceiling. Benchmark: 21 tasks, 3 runs each, with and without the plugin. Total cost went from $9.56 to $7.69 (1.24x), multi-file tasks 1.56x, quality 0.96 in both arms. Caveats: it is not 10x, the tasks are small, and differences under about 15 percent are within the noise I saw. Routes were tuned on the same tasks. Repo with raw runs and scorer: https://github.com/Arthur031221/Token-Beggar I would like feedback on whether the benchmark design is convincing, and what per-class numbers you see if you try it.   submitted by   /u/Arthur122103 [link]   [comments]