People always say stuff like this, but it is misleading. The reason it's misleading is because that remaining 5% makes a huge difference, and is where most of the value of using AI agents lies.

I'm not interested in using AI to write code that would have taken me 5-10 minutes to write myself. I use AI to debug complex bugs and develop large features that span multiple domains - stuff that normally takes hours, if not days/weeks. A model that is "enough for 95%" does not cut it for that, because the failures compound during long-horizon tasks and the thing becomes a mess.

I get what you mean. But for many people, AI coding is not about solving complex problems. No, they do it mostly themselves. AI coding for many is a productivity tool, where it helps you with mundane, but laborious tasks.

In my setup, I use a daily workhorse for such things. They should be fast, cheap and reasonably working well. I don’t expect it to be smart, but need it to follow instructions perfectly and handle tool calling well.

For architectural work or debugging help, I use the top models instead.

That works reasonably well for me with a low cost.