Artifact: Scoped vs. Open-Ended Prompt -- the Cost Comparison
The same bug fix, prompted two ways, compared by token cost -- exercises co-18.
| Prompt style | Task | Turns | Total tokens | Total cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open-ended: "the retry logic is flaky, fix it" | same bug fix | 6 | 48,200 | $0.72 |
Scoped: names carrier_adapter/retry.py, the failing assertion, and the fix constraint | same bug fix | 2 | 11,400 | $0.17 |
The open-ended prompt spent its first three turns locating the flaky test, reading the retry module, and forming a hypothesis before making any change -- work the scoped prompt's author had already done and simply stated up front.
Last updated July 17, 2026