deprecation

Benchmark gains do not cover what users built around the old model. Measure the behaviour that changed, give people a bridge and decide in advance when the old model goes.

Deprecations are where platforms earn or lose developer trust. The interviewer wants a timeline, a recommended replacement with evidence, migration tooling, and special handling for customers who cannot move easily.

One major provider wound down its evals product and pointed customers to an open-source tool; others keep investing. Decide based on whether evals drive model usage, and on whether customers want evaluation tied to one vendor.

Customers running fine-tuned models in production depend on the base model staying alive. Stage the wind-down, keep inference running until the base retires and give each segment a path forward.

A prototype became something people depend on, on a platform with a shutdown date. Triage it, export the prompts and configuration now, name an owner, and rebuild only if usage justifies it.

Better on paper is not better to the people who built habits around the old thing. Show the usage evidence, the notice, the bridge and what you carried forward.