← Principles
watching

“Show quality, cost, speed and safety as a profile, not one number.”

One number is easy to read and hides the trade a change made. A prompt that answers better and costs twice as much is a decision, not an improvement. Four changes side by side keep that decision with the person instead of burying it in a weighted average the team did not agree on.

The Context Matrix

Where this principle has been tested. Untested cells are honest gaps, not passing grades — seen evidence for one? Tell us.

ChatIDECLICanvas / DocAmbient / Background
Coding
Knowledge Work ◐
Consumer
Enterprise Ops
Creative

● supports · ◐ boundary · ✕ violates · blank untested

Linked Patterns

Comparison View

Boundary Conditions

  • knowledge-work × canvas-doc × supervised

    Win and tie rates collapse the comparison to one figure per candidate.

Evidence

supports

Score, cost and latency as separate deltas.

knowledge-work × canvas-doc × supervised · Langfuse: the release check reads passed, regressed, or failed to run

boundary

Win and tie rates collapse the comparison to one figure per candidate.

knowledge-work × canvas-doc × supervised · Vertex AI: a rubric is written for each example and checked pass or fail