The era of the unlimited, always-on, general-purpose AI agent is ending. Subscriptions weren’t priced for behavior that never sleeps, and a monthly plan burning thousands of dollars in computation was never going to survive the unit economics.

If you’ve tried to get an AI pilot past Phase One, none of this is surprising. The conversations have been about deploying AI where it can reliably support complex technical documentation and high-stakes workflows with accuracy that holds up.

That distinction is where value shows up. Much of the last wave of AI investment focused on low-stakes use cases. Those projects make for clean board updates, but they don’t change the cost structure of a service organization or move a P&L.

The work that pays back is in the harder, higher-consequence places—the fault that was diagnosed correctly the first time. The truck roll that didn’t have to happen. The senior technician who didn’t have to be pulled off another job.

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