Scaled to 16 agents and realized something counterintuitive:
Wrapping Character.AI and Codex is WAY cheaper than wrapping Perplexity's infrastructure.
Why? These platforms have massive user bases, so edge cases are already battle-tested and handled. You're essentially piggybacking on their production-grade error handling and optimization work.
The hidden cost isn't the API call—it's dealing with weird user inputs, rate limits, and unexpected failures. Platforms with millions of users have already paid that debugging tax.
Wrapping Character.AI and Codex is WAY cheaper than wrapping Perplexity's infrastructure.
Why? These platforms have massive user bases, so edge cases are already battle-tested and handled. You're essentially piggybacking on their production-grade error handling and optimization work.
The hidden cost isn't the API call—it's dealing with weird user inputs, rate limits, and unexpected failures. Platforms with millions of users have already paid that debugging tax.