The enrichment waterfall, and what charged on success really means

What the phrase covers

• A row where the tool found nothing costs you nothing. That is the whole promise.
• A row where the tool found something costs the unit price, once per result if the tool returns several.
• It says nothing about quality. A found value that is wrong is still a success as far as charging is concerned.
• It does not apply to tools that reason or verify. Those are charged on run, because the work happened either way.

Running a waterfall

A waterfall is several attempts at the same field in cheapness order, where each attempt only runs on rows the previous one missed. Cheapest and most reliable first, expensive and broad last.

1. 1

   Attempt one: what you already have

   The source often supplies the field for a portion of rows. That portion is free. Filter it out of every subsequent attempt.

2. 2

   Attempt two: the cheap deterministic tool

   Runs on the remainder only, via a condition on the first column being empty.

3. 3

   Attempt three: the expensive or agentic tool

   Runs only on what is still empty. By now that is a small fraction of the original table.

4. 4

   Stop when the marginal cost stops making sense

   The last 8 percent of a field usually costs more than the first 70. Decide in advance whether you actually need it, or whether those rows are simply out.

Eighty seven percent coverage having paid for 520 rows rather than 1,000, and the decision about the last 125 rows is yours to make with full information rather than as a surprise at the end.