Write the decision policy before choosing providers
For each task class, agree on the minimum accepted quality, permitted providers, data constraints and maximum elapsed time. Set a total cost budget for the completed task rather than considering one model call in isolation.
Separate planned routing from failure recovery. Planned routing chooses a suitable path at the start or an agreed boundary. Failover responds to a timeout, unavailable provider or another defined failure. Both need explicit limits.
Simple tasks may stay with one model or a deterministic business rule. Adding a second model should be a testable hypothesis, not a default requirement.
Agree on the information your team needs
Define what users and reviewers need to understand the request, assess the result and decide the next business step. Confirm which customer records may be used and who may access them.
Implementation specifications, training materials and internal operational methods are confidential. Any technical evaluation requires a separately agreed scope and access conditions.
Define how unresolved work reaches a person
Agree on when a workflow must pause, what a reviewer should receive and who is responsible for the decision. Customer changes, missing information and service interruptions should be included in the pilot.
Any action that affects business records needs agreed permissions and acceptance criteria. Capabilities must be verified in the selected integrations before production.
Evaluate interruptions as part of the pilot
| Scenario | Question to answer |
|---|---|
| Primary provider timeout | Does recovery respect the remaining deadline and cost budget? |
| Invalid or incomplete output | Do validation checks reject it before an action occurs? |
| Context omitted at a handoff | Is missing evidence detected or sent for review? |
| Lost response after an update | Is the destination reconciled before another attempt? |
| Permission denied | Does the workflow stop without widening access? |
Measure outcomes against the single-model and current-process baselines. These are proposed pilot requirements. The public Steprill demonstration is illustrative and is not a running provider-failover service.