The Right Model

Three products on your desk, each needing a model decision today. (1) Support-ticket classification: 10M tickets/month, two labels only — complaint or inquiry — on a $200/month budget. (2) In-product assistant chat: the user must see the first word in under a second; questions are ordinary and mid-length. (3) Legal contract analysis: 40 contracts/month, ~60 pages each, where one missed clause can cost the company many times the entire bill. You have a model landscape sheet: small (cheap, fast), mid, and frontier (far pricier, sharper on hard reasoning).

Success: Pick a model per scenario and defend it with cost, latency, and quality math — not reputation.