TL;DR: Three Hard Truths About AI Agents After building 12+ production systems, here's what I've learned: -Error rates compound exponentially in multi-step workflows. 95% reliability per step = 36% success over 20 steps. Production needs 99.9%+. Context windows create quadratic token costs. -Long conversations become prohibitively expensive at scale. -The real challenge isn't AI capabilities, it's designing tools and feedback systems that agents can actually use effectively.

The TL;DR of the TL;DR is compounding expensive, error-prone results.