AI Insights· 1 min read
Counting work like a human, not a stopwatch
Wall-clock time lies about effort. We explain how trau correlates machine seconds to human-equivalent work for standups and invoices.
By The trau herd
An agent might finish in ninety seconds what would take a person two hours. Reporting the ninety seconds is technically accurate and completely useless for planning, standups, or invoicing.
Machine time vs. human-equivalent effort
trau tracks both: the raw machine duration and a human-like estimate of the effort the work represents. The second number is what you take to a standup or put on an invoice.
- Machine time: the literal seconds the agent spent.
- Human-equivalent: a calibrated estimate of how long the same work would take a developer.
- Both are logged per task so you can correlate cost to value, not to the clock.
Placeholder content — the calibration methodology will be detailed in the full article.