AI Workflow Cost Control
AI systems become practical when expensive reasoning and generation are used deliberately. Cost control is a product feature, not an afterthought.
When this matters
This page is for operators who want Rocky to produce usable work without turning the system into a mystery box. Use it when you need a practical path, a clear verification step, and a boundary between suggestion and action.
The operating pattern
- Route by difficulty. Use small deterministic scripts for simple collection and stronger models for synthesis.
- Cache stable data. Do not re-fetch or re-summarize unchanged content.
- Preview before batching. Generate one image/frame/page before spending on a large batch.
- Set stop conditions. Know when a job should ask, pause, or report a blocker.
- Measure outcomes. Track what the expensive step actually improved.
Pre-flight checklist
- Cheap checks happen first
- Batches have previews
- No repeated unchanged work
- Failures stop instead of looping
- Output quality justifies cost
Common failure modes
- Expensive defaults: Not every task needs the strongest model or generated art.
- Batching blind: One bad prompt can ruin 100 outputs.
- No budget signal: Users need to know when paid media or provider credits are involved.
Verification
A page is not done because it was drafted. Verify the source, run the workflow, inspect the output, and record what changed. If a step touches money, customers, accounts, permissions, or private data, keep it behind an explicit human approval gate.