Workflow Orchestration

Chapter 1 estimated one run of the research assistant at 250 seconds by adding fixed durations along its longest chain: a 30-second plan, four subagents working in parallel for 100 seconds, then 60 seconds each of synthesis and citation. Simulate 20,000 runs with realistic randomness instead, and the median run takes 277 seconds, one in twenty takes longer than 332, and one in a hundred longer than 584, more than twice the estimate. When the worker executing a run dies in minute three, the crash costs anything from nothing to the run's full $1.14, depending on what the orchestrator recorded.