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abstract indexed · arXiv 2609.28919 · updated 2026-10-18

Control the Harness, Control the Cost: Routing and Governing AI Coding Agents in the Enterprise

First page of Control the Harness, Control the Cost: Routing and Governing AI Coding Agents in the Enterprise
From the original paper · arXiv 2609.28919Page 1. Select the image to read the PDF.

The method replaces default vendor harness behavior, in which one proprietary harness fixes the model, cache usage, and subagent choices for every request, with a calibrated classifier (Jev) that routes sessions at cache-safe switch points: session start, side lanes, and subagent launches. It costs the effort of building and maintaining a bring-your-own prompt taxonomy, training the classifier, and operating a control plane, plus the risk of paying cache-rebuild costs when mid-task switches do not pay back. It can fail if the enterprise's workload is small enough that routing savings are below engineering cost, if price sheets or vendor APIs change, or if misclassification routes work to a model whose quality loss exceeds the savings.

For solo builders

A possible application for this research area. Paper-specific feasibility still needs a full-paper review.

Your coding assistant makes changes that still need substantial repair before merging.

What you would change

Try the technique on held-out issues from a repository with reliable tests.

Try the idea on your product

A proposed first test. Set your budget and success criteria before running it.

Try the technique on held-out issues from a repository with reliable tests.

Compare against

The same coding agent, repository snapshot, tools, and token budget.

  1. Locate the paper's implementation and check its license, model support, data needs, and hardware requirements. Stop here if you cannot obtain the required artifacts.
  2. Save a small set of representative product tasks and expected outcomes. Keep evaluation tasks out of any training or tuning, and choose quality and cost limits before running.
  3. Run the baseline and the proposed change on identical inputs. Keep other settings fixed and repeat paired runs to expose variation.
  4. Save per-task outputs, failures, timings, and all usage costs. Review regressions before expanding the test.

What to measure

Correct patches, regression failures, human repair time, and total cost per accepted change.

When to keep it

Keep the change only if it meets your preselected quality and latency limits and improves the metric you care about after setup and operating costs. Otherwise retain the baseline. This is an exploration plan, not a validated recommendation.

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Abstract-level screening only. Risks and infrastructure may not have been evaluated. This recommendation is not a reproduced result.
minimum test setup
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published evidence setup
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source-linked claims
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exposure checks
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Why it was shortlisted

The technical change, research area, and reason it entered the archive.

recommendation
test
research area
coding agents
technical change
Cost-aware routing of coding-agent sessions across models
published
2026-09-24

Routing at session boundaries is implementable with API access and no cluster, but the claimed 14-21% savings are validated at 10,000-seat scale, so a small team must confirm on its own usage that savings exceed the cost of building the taxonomy and classifier.

About the technical core

Equations have not been fetched yet.

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Claims and evidence

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  1. claim 01Paperraft inference
    Read the brief interpretation

    The method replaces default vendor harness behavior, in which one proprietary harness fixes the model, cache usage, and subagent choices for every request, with a calibrated classifier (Jev) that routes sessions at cache-safe switch points: session start, side lanes, and subagent launches. It costs the effort of building and maintaining a bring-your-own prompt taxonomy, training the classifier, and operating a control plane, plus the risk of paying cache-rebuild costs when mid-task switches do not pay back. It can fail if the enterprise's workload is small enough that routing savings are below engineering cost, if price sheets or vendor APIs change, or if misclassification routes work to a model whose quality loss exceeds the savings.

    This is a Paperraft inference. It is not pinned to a verified PDF passage.

    Inspect the source
  2. claim 02Paperraft inference

    Router recovers 14-21% of model spend ($3.3M-$5.0M/year) in an emulated 10,000-seat enterprise; on long tool-heavy sessions the highest-priced model can cost less than the next tier due to cache effects.

    This is a Paperraft inference. It is not pinned to a verified PDF passage.

    Inspect the source

Exposure map

Author findings, Paperraft interpretations, and the next check. Missing analysis never counts as evidence of safety.

quality

Still unknown

Which tasks improve, and which regress against the baseline?

compute and memory

Still unknown

What memory, hardware, and total compute does the complete method require?

latency

Still unknown

Are startup time, typical response time, and slow requests measured separately?

operations

Still unknown

What must be monitored, maintained, and rolled back?

software compatibility

Still unknown

Does the implementation support your model, runtime, and hardware?

security

Still unknown

What new data access, permissions, or trust boundaries does it introduce?

data and training

Still unknown

What data preparation or training is required, and is it included in the cost?

reproducibility

Still unknown

Are code, versions, inputs, and evaluation scripts available?

Continue the investigation

A reading guide for coding agents.

Editorial prompts, not findings from this paper or a validated test plan. Detailed analysis is still pending for the topics below.

What to inspect

Does the evaluation use held-out repositories and tests the agent cannot modify?

Plan a fair comparison

Can you run both agents against the same repository snapshot, tool permissions, and time budget?

Questions for adoption

How many tasks pass independent tests, and what is the cost per accepted change?

Read the paper with these questions

Inside the paper

Preview the first 3 pages of the original PDF. Click the stack to turn the page.

The downloadable skill includes SKILL.md and evidence.json, with recorded findings and unanswered checks. TRY-IT.md adds a product test plan and a blank results sheet.

A reading aid for your agent. Findings still need validation.

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Provisional research brief updated 2026-10-18. Paperraft has not reproduced this experiment.

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arXiv 2609.28919

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