With SOTA models I can just set up the instructions (even a little bit fuzzy), go away for 10 or 15 minutes, come back and just check result and adjust when necessary (and most of the time small adjustment are necessary, but the overall work is pretty good).

With subpar models I must be more careful on providing instructions and check it step by step because the path it chose is wrong, or I didn't ask for or the agent stuck in a loop somewhere.

A lot of people aren’t using agents that way. Not saying that it’s not a legitimate use or anything, just that I think the use cases are different. And yeah maybe for your specific use case, sota hosted models are the right choice