Not everything should cost a token: the case for deterministic AI

TLDR Dev · 2 weeks ago ● 3 sources

The article argues that teams waste tokens by routing deterministic, repetitive tasks through language models instead of using scheduled code. A specific example shows an agent reformatting JSON daily at significant cost when a simple script would work identically and free. The distinction matters because as token costs accumulate, organizations will shift mechanical work back to traditional applications and reserve AI reasoning for genuinely ambiguous decisions.