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ZENODO
Preprint . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: ZENODO
ZENODO
Preprint . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: Datacite
ZENODO
Preprint . 2026
License: CC BY
Data sources: Datacite
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Grep-Routed Agents: Bypassing the LLM Tax on Computer-Use Tasks

Authors: The LocalKin Team;

Grep-Routed Agents: Bypassing the LLM Tax on Computer-Use Tasks

Abstract

Computer-use agents conventionally consult an LLM on every action: read the prompt, decide which tool, format arguments, execute, read result, decide next step. We observe that for ~80% of macbench's 379 macOS-native tasks, those LLM round-trips are pure overhead — the natural-language prompt already implies one canonical shell action (a cerebellum action), and the work of choosing it can be done by grep against a small index. We present kinthink, a four-layer router that extracts Fast-path hints, does TF-IDF matching against 239 prompt examples, substitutes slot values, and executes the matched cerebellum action — all in 6-25 ms of shell, consuming zero LLM tokens on the hit path. On macbench 379 tasks: 48.0% pass in 76 min vs 30.4% in 107 min for the unrouted LLM-agent baseline (2x speed, +17.6pp accuracy, 99% token reduction on the dominant path). Web subcategory: 8/10 pass at 750ms avg / 0 tokens — direct counter to OpenAI Codex Chrome Extension (2026-05-07). Fourth installment in the LocalKin thesis chain: paper #1 (retrieval), #5 (cognition), #10 (LLM-tax measurement), this paper (routing) — all showing that for bounded domains, deterministic shell beats LLM round-trips.

Drafted 2026-05-11. Bilingual (EN + 中文).

Keywords

benchmark, cerebellum, skill library, LLM tax, macOS automation, agent routing, grep, computer-use agents

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
0
Average
Average
Average
Green