Claude Sonnet 4.5: 61% Reliability Is Enough To Win

Everyone's talking about AI agents hitting 61% reliability, but they're missing the real play: how to turn three of five finished tasks into real ROI.
Controlled tests are clean.
Claude Sonnet 4.5 reports 61% reliability in that setup.
Your business is not.
Agents at 61% are not failures.
I learned the gap is where money is made.
They are force multipliers if you plan for misses.
You don't need perfect.
You need predictable and recoverable.
Design the work so the agent does the busy clicks.
Keep humans for judgment, edge cases, and final checks.
This turns partial autonomy into compounding savings.
Last month, we tested an agent on 50 routine tasks across ops.
It completed 31 end to end, needed light edits on 12, and failed 7.
We saved 6.2 hours, cut response times by 38%, and reduced errors by 24%.
Total cost was $58 in API and compute.
Net time ROI beat a junior contractor by week two.
Here's what actually works ↓
• Map tasks by risk and repetition.
• Route low risk, high repetition work to the agent first.
• Set clear stop rules and escalation triggers.
• Track three metrics: success rate, edit time, and fallout cost.
• Review weekly and expand only what beats your baseline.
In four weeks, throughput increased 29% without new headcount.
Escalations dropped as the agent learned prompts and context.
The truth is simple.
Three wins out of five can transform your backlog.
What's stopping you from piloting a 30 day agent trial?