[Intro] (cash drawer click, blues guitar riff) Cheap on the ticket, costly on the floor. [Verse 1] They picked the little engine, said the price looked sweet, but it missed the hard cases and repeated the beat. Retry on retry, then a human in the chair, now the cheap call costs more than the careful one there. [Pre-Chorus] (handclaps) Count the whole journey, not the first line item, count every loopback and the people behind them. [Chorus] Cost per completed case, that is the number to face. Cheap if it lands, dear if it breaks, measure the work that the system takes. Fast for the flood, strong for the storm, route by the risk and the task's true form. Cost per completed case, not the cheapest first embrace. [Verse 2] Cache the stable prefix, let the volatile ride, do not bury every document inside. Batch the offline jobs when nobody waits, trim the tools that only raise the rates. But do not cut the thinking on a judgement call, when the cost of being wrong is the largest cost of all. [Verse - Rap] (shuffle rap) Input tokens, output tokens, cache read, cache write, tool overhead hiding in the invoice light. Latency from retrieval, retries in the stack, review queue swelling when the route falls back. A stronger model on the narrow hard lane, a faster one on the routine plain. Evaluation says where the border should be, not ego, not vibes, not "cheap to me". [Chorus] Cost per completed case, that is the number to face. Cheap if it lands, dear if it breaks, measure the work that the system takes. Fast for the flood, strong for the storm, route by the risk and the task's true form. Cost per completed case, not the cheapest first embrace. [Bridge] (guitar drops low) If manual cleanup doubles in the dark, your saving was a question mark. If latency wins but trust is gone, the spreadsheet sang the wrong song. [Final Chorus] (full band) Cost per completed case, that is the number to face. Cache what repeats, route what is hard, watch every retry on the card. Fast for the flood, strong for the storm, prove it in evals before you transform. Cost per completed case, the architect counts the whole place. [Outro] (cash drawer closes) Not price per call. Cost per outcome.
