Perma-Beta

Problem

Without an evaluation harness, every release is a guess: regressions land invisibly, model upgrades are accepted or rejected on vibe, and customer-facing quality drifts without anyone noticing until churn reveals it. Beta becomes a permanent excuse that costs nothing to keep and absorbs all accountability for unmeasured quality. Eventually a competitor ships a graduated version of a similar product and the beta team discovers, too late, that they never had a measurement story.

Solution

Don't. Build the eval harness and exit beta. See eval-harness, llm-as-judge, shadow-canary.

When to use

• Cite this entry when the beta label is the answer to every quality complaint.
• You are already here if the product has been 'beta' for quarters with no eval harness or exit criteria.
• Build eval-harness, gate releases with llm-as-judge and shadow-canary, and exit beta deliberately.