The one number you wish you had measured six months earlier

[akash-coded]

One reply each. The number, why you did not have it, and what it would have changed.

Mine is the ungrounded baseline — what the model scores on the eval set with no retrieved
context at all.

It costs one run. Without it, every answer_correct you report is uninterpretable, because you
cannot tell the system's contribution from the model's prior knowledge. It is the right by
accident floor from The Four
Verdicts, and I have never once
seen it in a client deck.

Suggested shape

the number        what it is
why you lacked it nobody asked / seemed obvious / no harness
what it changed   the decision you would have made differently

Answers that are a category of number rather than a specific one are fine — "anything with an
interval" is a legitimate entry and probably the most common one.