Practice · 2024–now · AI Present
Reasoning models for grep tasks
o1-class deliberation for tickets that needed a filter. Resume-driven inference.
Why Reasoning models for grep tasks became a costly fad
Reasoning-model overkill failed as a default because expensive deliberation is not a substitute for clear specs and cheap tools. Frontier reasoning sticks on hard planning and math; it fades when every autocomplete call escalates to a thinking model. The fad was status; the stuck layer is model routing.
Cost of the fad
What Reasoning models for grep tasks cost
Thinking tokens burned on problems a SQL query and a unit test would settle. Latency and invoices grew; correctness did not.
Patterns
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