- One e2-standard-4 (4 vCPU, 16GB) instead of one VM per agent - Agents as isolated Linux users with separate systemd services - Birth is fast (~30s) — no VM provisioning, just create user + copy files - Stagger pulse intervals to avoid resource contention - systemd MemoryMax per agent (4GB cap) - ~$50/month total instead of $100+ Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>