Token Cost Is the Last Problem You Need to Solve — The Velocity Lab

Episode Summary

Teams evaluating Shipwright keep asking the same question: why only Claude Code? Dave and Dan walk through their evaluation of the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), what it supports today, where it falls short for autonomous work, and why they think token cost is the last problem an engineering org should be solving.

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Key Topics

What ACP is and where it sits in the stack, between your chat or editor and the coding agent CLI
What ACP handles well today: sessions, prompting, streaming and tool calls
The gaps that matter for autonomous coding: skills, sub-agents, hooks, budgets and reliable cost data
Why switching CLIs means rewriting skills, and why skills even need tuning when the model changes
The two real reasons to go multi-model: cost on self-hosted open models, and security for data that can't leave your network
Why getting 2X throughput from autonomous agents comes before optimizing the model bill

Notable Quotes

"Token cost, trust me, is the last problem you need to solve."
"Your code review step is not gonna be 2X better because Claude wrote the PR and Codex reviewed it."
"Fix the throughput. Don't change the model."

About The Velocity Lab

Dave O'Dell and Dan McAulay work inside engineering organizations every day helping them ship faster with AI. No hype, no BS — just what's working in the field.

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