Four of five LLM agents lose to a rule-based baseline running 20 vending machines
AutoVend gives one LLM agent 20 vending machines across five site types to run through a web interface for 180 simulated days, with a shared warehouse, procurement lead times, expiring stock and operating costs. Four of five agents tested fell short of a rule-based inventory-control baseline. Ranking models by returns per dollar of inference cost ordered them differently from returns alone.