> agents are neither going to be as reliable or as cheap to run as the software they produce that does it deterministically

There are classes of software for which that is both unambiguously true, and will always be true. Handling HTTP requests, for example. I just find the trade-off has shifted from "you absolutely need to delegate this or program it" to also including "or just have a folder and get the agent to do it", and I'm finding this pattern pop up more and more for me.