Measuring AI's Return with KOI and Nishiki
Measuring outcome per dollar for LLM agents — KOI (= KPI ÷ cost) — with the open-source tool Nishiki. From the VOI/KOI concept to hands-on measurement on real tasks like Text-to-SQL.
2 articles
Part 1. VOI and KOI: Metrics for the Token Economy — Maximizing AI's Result per Dollar
Tokenmaxxing is turning AI usage into an internal score, and infrastructure cost is running away. I look at model routers as the first line of defense, their blind spot, and the shift from input-driven to outcome-driven routing with two metrics — VOI and KOI — and an open-source tool, Nishiki.
Part 2. Measuring KOI on a Text-to-SQL agent — picking a cost-effective model without dropping quality
Using a Text-to-SQL agent — you ask in plain language, the AI writes SQL and queries an internal database — I measured five models by KOI (KPI ÷ cost). With a quality floor in place, I show how to pick the most cost-effective model, with real numbers and the full procedure.