"Can we add AI?" is now the most common question we get from clients with existing platforms. The honest answer is: yes, but not the way you're imagining.
Treat AI as a service, not a feature
Resist the urge to scatter LLM calls throughout your codebase. Wrap every AI capability behind a clean interface so it can be swapped, A/B tested, or disabled without surgery. When the API changes — and it will — you'll thank yourself.
Evaluation comes before deployment
Traditional features are evaluated against deterministic correctness. AI features are evaluated against quality distributions. You need a structured eval suite before shipping, or you're flying blind.
Costs compound silently
An LLM call in a tight loop will burn through a monthly budget in hours. Always cache, always rate-limit, always log token usage. We've audited four production systems this year that were quietly hemorrhaging money to API costs no one was tracking.
