Case studies

Five verified case studies, each reproducible from a pinned corpus through the same gated pipeline, each number carrying its 95% CI and workload.

• tokei — compounding algorithmic wins (Rust) — three class-5 wins on the same hot function, each unattended and audited.
• Cheap wins first: build flags & allocators — LTO accepted (+10%), mimalloc held for a human ruling then accepted-scoped.
• The caught false-accept (comrak) — the leaking teardown the bench loved, overturned by audit. The most important study.
• cJSON — the cross-language proof (C) — a sub-threshold win rejected, then a byte-identical win accepted, on a C target.
• Services & scale: latency under load — the cJSON win measured as a latency delta under coordinated-omission-correct replay, turned into a dollar figure mechanically.