High-accuracy paths are slower; real-time commerce needs explicit SLO ladders per intent. Product must choose defaults per risk tier—not engineering alone.
Executive snapshot
The Latency-Accuracy Tradeoff in Agentic Flows
Systems & logicLatency
The move
Buyers expect instant answers even when verification is inherently expensive.
The friction
One global model path either burns budget or misses compliance-heavy questions.
The product verdict
Expose latency budgets in PRDs; ship progressive disclosure and async resolution where needed.
Field note · Strategic dispatch · /dispatch/latency-accuracy-tradeoff-agentic-flows