Calculate feature cost to serve

Calculate fully loaded feature cost and CVaR cost per verified adopted account across aligned build-amortization, run, support, usage, and adoption scenarios.

What it's for

Shows which capabilities remain expensive to operate per genuinely adopting customer after build, infrastructure, usage, and support costs are reconciled.

What you give it

Inputs split into evidence read from your connected systems, calibration your team owns, and numerical controls that affect precision but never the result's meaning.

Field Type Role Required
features array of objects (7 fields) Evidence Yes
max_detail_rows integer ≥ 1, ≤ 500 Numerical control Optional
maximum_expected_cost_per_adopted_account any Your calibration Optional
scenario_probabilities array of number ≥ 2 items Evidence Yes
tail_probability number ≥ 0.001, ≤ 0.5 Your calibration Optional

Each features record

Field Type Required
adopted_accounts_scenarios array of number (≥ 2 items) Yes
amortized_build_cost_per_period number (≥ 0) Yes
fixed_run_cost_scenarios array of number (≥ 2 items) Yes
id string (non-empty) Yes
support_cost_scenarios array of number (≥ 2 items) Yes
usage_volume_scenarios array of number (≥ 2 items) Yes
variable_cost_per_usage_unit number (≥ 0) Yes
Example input
{
  "features": [
    {
      "adopted_accounts_scenarios": [
        10,
        20,
        30
      ],
      "amortized_build_cost_per_period": 100,
      "fixed_run_cost_scenarios": [
        50,
        60,
        70
      ],
      "id": "analytics",
      "support_cost_scenarios": [
        20,
        30,
        40
      ],
      "usage_volume_scenarios": [
        100,
        200,
        300
      ],
      "variable_cost_per_usage_unit": 0.1
    }
  ],
  "maximum_expected_cost_per_adopted_account": 20,
  "scenario_probabilities": [
    0.2,
    0.5,
    0.3
  ]
}

What you get back

This is the actual output of running the example above — computed by the same function the platform calls, not an illustration.

Example output
{
  "assumptions": [
    "Build amortization, fixed run, variable usage, and support cost share one accounting period, currency, capitalization/allocation policy, and feature boundary without omitted shared cost.",
    "Adopted accounts represent verified business use rather than license assignment, feature exposure, commits, tickets, or raw event volume.",
    "Cost per adopted account is undefined in zero-adoption scenarios; their probability remains explicit rather than silently dividing by a small constant."
  ],
  "configuration": {
    "maximum_expected_cost_per_adopted_account": 20,
    "scenario_count": 3,
    "tail_probability": 0.1
  },
  "decision": "feature_cost_to_serve_within_threshold",
  "feature_diagnostics": [
    {
      "cvar_cost_per_adopted_account": 18,
      "exceeds_cost_threshold": false,
      "expected_adopted_accounts": 21,
      "expected_cost_per_adopted_account": 11.25,
      "expected_total_cost": 213,
      "feature_id": "analytics",
      "probability_zero_adopted_accounts": 0
    }
  ],
  "method": "fully_loaded_feature_cost_to_serve_scenarios_v1",
  "summary": {
    "feature_count": 1,
    "portfolio_cvar_cost_per_adopted_account": 18,
    "portfolio_expected_adopted_accounts": 21,
    "portfolio_expected_cost_per_adopted_account": 11.25,
    "portfolio_expected_total_cost": 213,
    "portfolio_probability_zero_adopted_accounts": 0
  },
  "truncated_feature_count": 0
}

How it works

Decision analysis — Turn uncertainty, cost and risk appetite into a defensible choice, with the reasoning left inspectable.

  1. 1 Freeze the feature/accounting boundary, amortized build cost, fixed run and support paths, variable usage economics, and verified adopted-account paths over one period and currency.
  2. 2 Calculate scenario total cost and cost per adopted account only where adoption is positive, retaining zero-adoption probability explicitly, then aggregate portfolio unit cost and CVaR.
  3. 3 Expose threshold breaches and reconcile shared-cost allocation and adoption evidence before comparing features or feeding product/pricing decisions.

Before you trust it

Every tool in the catalog ships with the conditions under which its answer is meaningful — and the conditions under which it should abstain instead of guessing.

Assumptions & guardrails

  • Actions, outcomes, utilities, evidence boundaries, uncertainty representation, and accountable ownership match the actual decision.
  • Costs are complete and non-overlapping under one capitalization/allocation policy, while adopted accounts reflect verified business use rather than exposure, license assignment, or raw events.
  • The result structures a governed choice; it does not replace accountable judgment or authorize action outside the declared decision boundary.
  • Cost per adopted account is undefined in zero-adoption states and is not feature value, profitability, or evidence about the people who built or support it.

Minimum evidence

  • features: required and organization-defined
  • scenario_probabilities: at least 2 rows/items

How to validate it

Validate on future periods or held-out aggregate units, compare with a simple baseline, and require stability across plausible metric definitions and decision thresholds.

Calibrating it to your org

Same for everyone

The mathematical kernel, validation rules, method version, and JSON output semantics are organization-independent; no tenant-trained coefficients or company benchmark is embedded in the function.

Specific to you

  • aligned scenario paths for fixed run, support, usage, adopted accounts, and fully loaded feature cost
  • feature/account boundary, accounting period/currency, capitalization/amortization, shared allocation, usage unit/rate, adoption event, scenarios/probabilities, tail level, and threshold

Calibration workflow

  1. 1 Define the management decision, target outcome, aggregate unit, privacy boundary, cadence, and prediction/intervention horizon for this organization.
  2. 2 Build a tenant-scoped historical cohort using only information available before each prediction or decision; preserve zero periods, censoring, assignment probabilities, and unresolved outcomes when the method requires them.
  3. 3 Estimate statistical parameters on training history, but obtain costs, utilities, risk tolerance, practical-effect thresholds, capacity, and policy constraints from accountable decision owners.
  4. 4 Validate on later time windows or held-out aggregate units at the deployment grain, against a simple baseline and the function-specific validation strategy.
  5. 5 Deploy only if the returned decision clears evidence, overlap, calibration, robustness, and guardrail checks; warning, unsupported, schema-gap, and fallback decisions are abstentions.
  6. 6 Monitor realized outcomes, data drift, coverage, and decision regret; recalibrate at a governed cadence or after a detected regime/definition change, never merely because a stakeholder dislikes the result.

Call it from your AI

You don't wire up 388 tools in your MCP client. The GitRevio MCP server exposes 18 tools, three of which let an agent search the catalog, read a tool's schema, and run it — so the assistant finds this one on its own.

gitrevio_capabilities_search
  { "q": "calculate fully loaded feature cost and" }
  → finds "calculate_feature_cost_to_serve"

gitrevio_capability_describe
  { "capability_id": "calculate_feature_cost_to_serve" }
  → returns the input schema and agent guidance shown on this page

gitrevio_capability_run
  { "capability_id": "calculate_feature_cost_to_serve", "arguments": { ... } }
  → returns the result shown above

Works in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Continue.dev, Goose and Aider. See the MCP server.

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