CustomLabs Insightshttps://customlabs.io/insights/Working notes on shipping AI in production, from the CustomLabs studio.en-usPrompt Injection Is a Data Problem: A Threat Model You Can Ship Againsthttps://customlabs.io/insights/prompt-injection-threat-model/Prompt injection can't be filtered away: the model can't reliably tell instructions from data. Here's the actual threat model and the controls that hold up.Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://customlabs.io/insights/prompt-injection-threat-model/Why Your AI Agent Works in the Demo and Stalls in Productionhttps://customlabs.io/insights/ai-agents-stall-in-production/An agent that nails the demo stalls in production because reliability compounds across steps. Here's the math, the real failure modes, and how to ship one anyway.Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://customlabs.io/insights/ai-agents-stall-in-production/What AI Actually Costs in Production, by Workloadhttps://customlabs.io/insights/ai-cost-benchmark-by-workload/A modeled, reproducible benchmark of cost-per-successful-outcome across four common AI workloads, with every token assumption, price, and overhead multiplier shown.Sat, 11 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://customlabs.io/insights/ai-cost-benchmark-by-workload/Model-Agnostic by Designhttps://customlabs.io/insights/model-agnostic-by-design/Models change under you every few months: price, quality, and capability. Here's why we never hardcode a single provider into a client's feature.Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://customlabs.io/insights/model-agnostic-by-design/Your RAG Demo Lied to Youhttps://customlabs.io/insights/your-rag-demo-lied/Retrieval that looks flawless on ten clean PDFs falls apart on a real corpus. Here's why, and what evaluating retrieval quality actually requires.Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://customlabs.io/insights/your-rag-demo-lied/What an AI Feature Actually Costs in Productionhttps://customlabs.io/insights/what-ai-actually-costs/Token costs that look trivial in a demo compound fast at scale. Here's how to make cost a first-class metric instead of a surprise on the invoice.Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://customlabs.io/insights/what-ai-actually-costs/Evals Before You Ship: Why AI Features Need Tests Toohttps://customlabs.io/insights/evals-before-you-ship/Shipping an AI feature without an eval suite in CI means every prompt tweak is a guess. Here's what an eval suite actually needs to cover.Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://customlabs.io/insights/evals-before-you-ship/Build, Buy, or Skip: A Framework for AI Decisionshttps://customlabs.io/insights/build-buy-or-skip/A technically honest framework for deciding whether an AI initiative should be built in-house, bought off the shelf, or skipped entirely this year.Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://customlabs.io/insights/build-buy-or-skip/From Notebook to Production: What Actually Breakshttps://customlabs.io/insights/notebook-to-production/The gap between a working AI demo and a production feature is auth, latency, cost and fallbacks. Here's how we close it without a rewrite.Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://customlabs.io/insights/notebook-to-production/