Explore/agent app/ACEM: A Cost Estimation Model for Agentic Software Engineering
A

Mohammad El-Ramly/ACEM: A Cost Estimation Model for Agentic Software EngineeringUnknown

Traditional software cost estimation models, such as COCOMO II, Function Points, and Story Points, assume that development effort is primarily driven by human labor in design, coding, and testing. Agentic software engineering, where autonomous AI agents perform substantial implementation work and humans focus on planning, specification, and validation, challenges this assumption. New cost dimensions arise: large language model (LLM) token consumption across agent actions, Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) oversight effort, and infrastructure costs for agent orchestration and tooling. These costs are nondeterministic: identical tasks may consume different tokens, follow divergent reasoning paths, and require varying human correction, phenomena absent in traditional development. A new framework is needed to bridge standard sizing metrics with this cost structure. This paper proposes ACEM (Agentic Cost Estimation Model), which decomposes total agentic development cost into three additive dimensions: LLM, HITL, and infrastructure cost. ACEM introduces three constructs for agentic dynamics: the Revision Factor (RF), modeling token overhead from output rejection and retries; the Context Factor (CF), capturing rising token consumption as context accumulates; and the HITL Intensity Score (HIS), a four-level oversight classification scheme. It further maps Use Case Points, Story Points, and Function Points to estimated token consumption, enabling organizations to reuse existing project-scoping data for agentic cost forecasting. ACEM is presented as a fully specified model structure and calibration methodology, with constants left symbolic pending empirical grounding. As an early-stage proposal, it invites the research community to calibrate, test, and extend the model through real project data.

agent app
GitHubCompare
Refreshed 1d ago
OverviewActivity52wAlternativesDocs
Stars0
Forks0
HF Downloads—30d
Last commit—
Refreshed1d ago
Project healthUnknownNo activity data.
Production readinessResearch / EarlyBest for exploration and prototyping.
Risk notesUnknown licenseVerify license before production use.
AgentHub Score
55 / 100
Composite score from 6 signals. How we score →
Active project
55Score
Growth
40C
Activity
30C
Documentation
70C+
Maturity
45C
Community
42C
Production
58C
GitHub stars · 0 days observed0 not enough history
snapshots
not enough history
Repository activity · 0 days observednot enough history from pushed_at
inactivepushed
not enough history
not enough history
Practical assessment
Should you use it?

✓ Best for

  • Research and experimentation
  • Prototype development
  • Learning agentic patterns

◎ Strengths

  • Active community
  • Open source
  • Well-documented API

✕ Not ideal for

  • Untested at scale without validation
  • Teams without AI/ML expertise

⚠ Watch-outs

  • Review changelog before updating
  • Verify license for commercial use
Technical details
What's inside
Language—
License—
Sourcearxiv
Open source✗ No
Commercial use—
Docs—
Demo—

AgentHub Score

55
Score 55/100
Below average

Alternatives

A
ai-agents-for-beginners
71.3k · agent app
95
A
ai-website-cloner-template
31.0k · agent app
95
V
Vibe-Trading
29.8k · agent app
95
Q
qwen-code
26.7k · agent app
95Compare all →

Recent activity

Latest commit ——
Indexed by AgentHub crawler1d ago
Monitor for new releasesongoing