Agent Work Estimation Skill

Problem

AI coding agents systematically overestimate task duration because they anchor to human developer timelines absorbed from training data. A task an agent can complete in 30 minutes gets estimated as "2-3 days" because that's what a human developer forum post would say.

Solution

Force the agent to estimate from its own operational units — tool-call rounds — and only convert to human wallclock time at the very end.

Core Units

Unit	Definition	Scale
Round	One tool-call cycle: think → write code → execute → verify → fix	~2-4 min wallclock
Module	A functional unit built from multiple rounds until usable	2-15 rounds
Wave	A batch of modules with no mutual dependencies, executable in parallel	1-N modules
Project	All waves sequentially + integration + debugging	Sum of waves

agent-estimation

Agent Work Estimation Skill

Problem

Solution

Core Units