---
title: "Research | Recovea"
description: "The open problem: deciding a cheaper model is no worse on your own traffic. And the basis vocabulary — what each word printed beside a number commits us to."
canonical: "https://recovea.ai/research/"
source: "https://recovea.ai/research/"
---

Our research

# Proving a cheaper model got no worse.

Routing to a cheaper model is easy. Deciding it changed nothing, without a human reading every prompt, is the program.

[See a chain re-derived](https://recovea.ai/proof/)

A number and the arithmetic under it.

## What makes it hard

- Real traffic

  Leaderboard scores do not transfer to your own prompts.
- No human in the loop

  A person grading every prompt is a demo, not a system.
- Cheaper than the answer

  An evaluation bill that eats the difference proves nothing worth having.
- Not proven

  Uncertainty resolves downward. It never rounds up into a claim.

Recovea research

Every number the platform shows is one click from the arithmetic behind it, and every receipt re-derives without us.

[Read the docs](https://docs.recovea.ai/)

- [The chain recipeFields, order, separator.](https://docs.recovea.ai/products/prove/)
- [Re-derivation in the browserAlter a row, watch the rest break.](https://recovea.ai/proof/)
- [The refusal contractWhat an armed cap answers.](https://docs.recovea.ai/products/cap/)

## The words we print beside a number

- **Measured**
  Arithmetic over counts the provider itself reported, priced against a version-pinned list. An unreported count is stored as null, never as a guess.
- **Modeled**
  A measured observation carried past its window. The label travels with the figure, and a projection is never rounded up into an outcome.
- **Applied**
  Something actually changed your traffic. Nothing here is applied: no lever is switched on in any deployed environment.
- **Verified**
  Reserved, and unused. No figure on this site carries it, and the platform vocabulary has no value that could hold it.

The price list is frozen

Costs are computed against a published reference list, pinned by version on every receipt. A published version never changes: a correction ships as a new one.

[The chain recipe](https://docs.recovea.ai/products/prove/)