The evaluation set is the asset that survives the kill
Killing a prototype destroys the system and preserves the encoded definition of correct behaviour. Salvage is a forward comparison, not a rescue justified by what was already spent.
4 min read
Killing well
Nobody plans the end of the chain
Transferred systems get retired by a team that did not build them, using documentation written for a handover years earlier. It is the least-instrumented stage and the one where the original evidence is worth most.
5 min read