A TinyCTO.tv Hype Stack technical parable about evaluation cost, benchmark volume, budget inversion. Design risk-based evaluations, representative sets, sampling, caching, and stop rules.
# Episode 174 — The Evaluation Cluster Evaluated the Budget — Script
## Concept evaluation cost;benchmark volume;budget inversion
## Hype promise A shared AI platform will make inference fast, observable, and economically predictable.
## System reality The evaluation cluster runs every model against every prompt on every commit because more evidence is assumed to mean more confidence.
Risk approval is not risk ownership unless the decision is tied to people who can act when the risk becomes real.