The AI Audit Checklist: Is Your Implementation Wasteful?

Use this checklist to find waste in your AI stack. Answer 20 questions. Get a score. Know exactly what to fix.

Cost & Infrastructure (5 questions)

• Do you track costs by feature/endpoint?
• Do you have cost alerts?
• Are you using the cheapest suitable model?
• Do you implement prompt caching?
• Is your infrastructure optimized for your workload?

Prompt Quality (5 questions)

• Are prompts tested before production?
• Do you have prompt versioning?
• Are prompts optimized for brevity?
• Do you use structured output (JSON)?
• Do you have feedback loops to improve prompts?

Monitoring & Operations (5 questions)

• Do you monitor output quality?
• Do you track latency?
• Do you have SLAs defined?
• Are there alerts for anomalies?
• Do you do monthly audits?

Team & Process (5 questions)

• Does someone own AI costs?
• Is there a prompt review process?
• Do you document model decisions?
• Is there a vendor strategy?
• Do you negotiate rates?

Scoring

0-7 correct: High waste. You're leaving $10K+/month on table. 8-12: Moderate. 5-10K/month optimization potential. 13-16: Good. Minor fixes only. 17-20: Excellent. You're optimized.