Put the model last

In Label Buddy the model runs sixth of eight stages, on the smallest possible input. Hashing, dedup, cache, rules, and embeddings resolve the bulk for free, so the slow, costly, non-deterministic step only sees what genuinely needs judgment. Cost discipline is a design decision, not an afterthought.

Policy as product surface

Label Buddy's entire scoring behaviour lives in an editable markdown file. Thresholds, per-label strictness, overlap rules, adjacency map, Valid/Review/Invalid bands, prompt guidelines. A PM or ops person tunes the model in plain language, no code change. The product around a model has to be tunable by the people who own the outcome.