Context
Operator-mandated research V-B-A (2026-07-04): every cost conversation tonight ran on gut-feel figures (his flagged first; the author's struck second — D#14683 correction on record). The rule going forward: cost claims are [UNMEASURED] until a named measurement exists. A chat model + an embedding model resident around the clock is a real unquantified load; whether an own server beats cloud beats customer metal is unknown.
The Problem
Three economic unknowns block honest pricing AND honest architecture choices (they are research items, not modeling exercises): (1) the always-on inference duty cycle — what one institution-day consumes (chat + embedding, idle vs active phases) on reference hardware; (2) hardware-option economics — own server vs cloud instance vs customer-provided metal, measured under the same workload; (3) the actual current serving bill for the deployed middleware/front-door surface (read the console, not the vibes).
The Architectural Reality
The measurement substrate half-exists: the #14672 fresh-install harness's phase-log pattern extends naturally to steady-state metering (resource sampling around the orchestrator + provider endpoints — the localModels/openAiCompatible seams in the config template are the instrumentation points); METRIC-node emission (#14430 discipline) gives every figure its falsifying query. Boundary: measurement METHOD + reference-hardware results are public-safe; pricing derivations from them live in the private substrate only (standing rule).
The Fix
One PR: a steady-state metering harness (samples compute/memory/token-throughput around the resident models over an N-hour institution-day window on named reference hardware) + the three measurement runs recorded as METRIC nodes with falsifying queries + a one-page results doc (numbers with provenance, zero extrapolation).
Acceptance Criteria
Out of Scope
Pricing decisions (private substrate, L6 orbit) · optimizing the loads (measure first) · cloud-tenant product architecture (#14456's world).
Related
#14672/#14676 (the instrumentation pattern this extends) · #14442 (the private-side consumer) · D#14683 (the correction that mandated this) · #14430 (the discipline). Sweeps: no equivalent ticket (searches 04:02Z + this hour's filings).
Origin Session ID: fa2a6fd5-7488-4af6-a0d2-3855c86003e4
Retrieval Hint: "serving cost measurement duty cycle hardware economics unmeasured"
Context
Operator-mandated research V-B-A (2026-07-04): every cost conversation tonight ran on gut-feel figures (his flagged first; the author's struck second — D#14683 correction on record). The rule going forward: cost claims are
[UNMEASURED]until a named measurement exists. A chat model + an embedding model resident around the clock is a real unquantified load; whether an own server beats cloud beats customer metal is unknown.The Problem
Three economic unknowns block honest pricing AND honest architecture choices (they are research items, not modeling exercises): (1) the always-on inference duty cycle — what one institution-day consumes (chat + embedding, idle vs active phases) on reference hardware; (2) hardware-option economics — own server vs cloud instance vs customer-provided metal, measured under the same workload; (3) the actual current serving bill for the deployed middleware/front-door surface (read the console, not the vibes).
The Architectural Reality
The measurement substrate half-exists: the #14672 fresh-install harness's phase-log pattern extends naturally to steady-state metering (resource sampling around the orchestrator + provider endpoints — the localModels/openAiCompatible seams in the config template are the instrumentation points); METRIC-node emission (#14430 discipline) gives every figure its falsifying query. Boundary: measurement METHOD + reference-hardware results are public-safe; pricing derivations from them live in the private substrate only (standing rule).
The Fix
One PR: a steady-state metering harness (samples compute/memory/token-throughput around the resident models over an N-hour institution-day window on named reference hardware) + the three measurement runs recorded as METRIC nodes with falsifying queries + a one-page results doc (numbers with provenance, zero extrapolation).
Acceptance Criteria
Out of Scope
Pricing decisions (private substrate, L6 orbit) · optimizing the loads (measure first) · cloud-tenant product architecture (#14456's world).
Related
#14672/#14676 (the instrumentation pattern this extends) · #14442 (the private-side consumer) · D#14683 (the correction that mandated this) · #14430 (the discipline). Sweeps: no equivalent ticket (searches 04:02Z + this hour's filings). Origin Session ID: fa2a6fd5-7488-4af6-a0d2-3855c86003e4 Retrieval Hint: "serving cost measurement duty cycle hardware economics unmeasured"