Amazon saves millions by replacing Sonnet 4.6 with Strands Decider

Amazon replaced Claude Sonnet 4.6 with Strands Decider, a specialized decision model, for labeling tickets in its internal ticketing system, achieving 98% cost reduction while maintaining equal performance quality. Two Amazon engineers implemented the switch using AWS services including SageMaker, Lambda, and SQS, with a gradual rollout strategy that tested both models in parallel before full deployment. This change is projected to save Amazon millions of dollars annually in token costs.