unit economics

Percentage savings make every quarter look like a win and tell you almost nothing. The candidates who get hired bring a denominator tied to revenue and defend it under pressure.

Pay-per-use sounds free until the invoice arrives. The candidates who impress decompose the bill into invocations, gigabyte-seconds and the lines nobody models, then locate the honest crossover.

Token spend has no natural ceiling. Every retry, every retrieved document, every chain step multiplies, and nothing in the system tells anyone until the invoice arrives.

A budget miss can coexist with lower cost per request. Separate demand, usage intensity and price effects before assigning an efficiency target.