Arize AX evaluates Qwen3.8 Flash in agent loop

An engineer tests whether wrapping a cheaper, smaller model in a manager-worker reasoning loop can replace a frontier model in a coding agent without sacrificing performance. By running experiments using Arize AX tracing and evaluations, the author finds that while the loop improves correctness close to the frontier model, it results in drastically higher latency and negligible cost savings. Open article →