Instrument your agent runs phase by phase

You cannot speed up an agent loop you are guessing about. A three-command shell helper - init, mark <phase>, report - stamps timestamps into a log and renders a markdown table at the end of every run. Call mark the moment a phase finishes, not when the next one starts, and let repeated labels sum.

Phases worth separating: task setup, implement, check-suite runs, acceptance review, test refresh, commit. Committing the report next to the task turns wall-clock into a tracked artifact instead of a feeling.

What it showed me: the coding is rarely the expensive part. It is the check-fix-recheck cycles and regenerating test scripts.