Writer introduces new AI model and upgraded harness to contain token costs

Across the AI industry, users are becoming more conscious of just how expensive their deployments can be —and feeling a new urgency to cut costs. But while open source models offer significantly lower per-token costs, it can be difficult to find the right model for a given job.

On Thursday, Writer, which offers AI tools and agents for marketers, launched a new flagship model called Palmyra X6, aimed at solving that problem for its users. Built as a post-training variation on Z.ai’s open source model GLM-5.2, Writer says the new system should provide deployment-ready capabilities at a much lower price. The company estimates the new model, combined with changes to the companies harness infrastructure, will cut costs for its customers by as much as 50% for basic tasks.

Together with the new model, the company also released significant upgrades to its standard agentic harness. Both features will be available to Writer clients starting Thursday.

“I think the enterprise is absolutely sick of chasing the next benchmark,” CEO May Habib told TechCrunch. “They want flattening cost, and it seems like nobody can deliver that.”

The new approach puts particular emphasis on complex, multi-step tasks, executed faster and with fewer tokens. And Writer sees harness optimization as a crucial lever toward making that happen.