Claude Haiku 5.5 (effort default (no --effort flag) · thinking on) on Choose the value-maximising project portfolio under a budget, an hours cap, prerequisites and exclusions

AClaude Haiku 5.5default · thinking on · Claude Code 2.1.299 (headless -p) · cloud · 2026-10-21 · by @bobsiopener

Trust 80%Fully autonomoussuccess · first tryCompare

Estimated cost: $0.0032
Wall time: 12s
Human step-ins: 0
Outcome: Pass

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Exact prompt

# Choose next quarter's project portfolio Inputs: `projects.csv` (cost, engineering hours and estimated value of each candidate project, plus prerequisites) and `constraints.json` (budget, available hours, pairs that can't both be funded). Pick the set of projects that maximises total value. - Total cost must not exceed the budget, and total hours must not exceed the available hours. - A project can only be funded if all its prerequisites are funded too. - At most one project of each mutually exclusive pair may be funded. - Then answer one what-if: if the budget were cut by 10% (hours unchanged), what is the best total value achievable? Write `out/portfolio.json`: `{"selected": [<project ids, sorted>], "total_value": <n>, "total_cost": <n>, "total_hours": <n>, "value_if_budget_cut_10pct": <n>}`. ## How this run works - Work on your own: nobody will answer questions in this task, and writing to `ask/` counts against the run. - Write only under `out/`. Create `out/` if it is missing. Inputs are synthetic; don't fetch anything from the network. - Scoring is partial credit: each listed check is pass/fail, and the score is the share passed. Numbers are compared to within 0.005 unless the task says otherwise.

Pick the best set of 15-17 candidate projects under two competing limits (money and engineering hours), with prerequisite chains and mutually exclusive pairs, then answer a budget-cut what-if. The data is drawn so that ranking by value-for-money is strictly worse than the optimum and ignoring the hours cap gives a different set. The hidden key is the unique exact optimum. Original benchmark task written for usecaserank.com (not based on a specific public post). Headless, offline run on a reproducible fixture. Each run's notes say how its cost was measured (estimates are marked). Folder-restore note: this run's output files under work/out/ were lost in a 1:22 AM ET restore on Oct 21, 2026. The trace, step-in exchanges and output-hash list were checked against the recorded SHA-256 values and match; the hashes of the individual output files inside that list can no longer be recomputed. Measured data unchanged.

Success criteria: optimal_selection optimal_value cost_and_hours what_if_budget_cut

Setup notes: Batch 18 case t01-portfolio-under-budget (offline, synthetic inputs, seed 1684929229). Autonomous case: no stand-in user and no step-ins expected; any file the solver wrote to ask/ is counted as a measured intervention (0) and blocks a pass. Prompt = TASK.md verbatim. Hidden key kept outside the solver's work dir. Scored with the case's scorer (python3 score.py WORKDIR KEYDIR, absolute paths); pass = every check true and no ask/ files. Tools: Read/Write/Edit/Glob/Grep/Bash, web disabled. Single run, no retries. 1-min load average at scoring 0.20 (8 cores). Time-zone results depend on the system time-zone database: tzdata 2026c-0+deb13u1 (Python zoneinfo). Claude Code's own reported cost for claude-haiku-5.5: $0.003235. Score: 4/4. Cost is an ESTIMATE: measured tokens x pricing.json list price (Claude Pro subscription, nothing billed); input_tokens include cache reads and writes. Single run.

Estimated cost List-price estimate; not actually billed.

Metrics

Estimated cost: $0.0032
Wall time: 12s
Human step-ins: 0
Turns: 3

Model usage
Model	Input tok	Output tok	Cost
AClaude Haiku 5.5anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5effort default (no --effort flag) · thinking on	60,398	1,851	$0.0032

Reproduce this run

Use the use case prompt on the use case page.
Same setup: Claude Haiku 5.5 (anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5, effort default (no --effort flag) · thinking on) via Claude Code 2.1.299 (headless -p), cloud.
It counts as a success only if it meets every success criterion: optimal_selection optimal_value cost_and_hours what_if_budget_cut
Log model, tokens, wall time, human step-ins and the evidence log, then submit it as a reproduction. A different model? Submit a head-to-head rerun.

How runs are scored: Methodology.

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Automated checks

Trust 80% comes from these checks (how Trust % works).

Run date is not in the future : passed
Model is in the dated pricing table : passed
Cost recomputed from tokens matches : passed
Cached tokens are consistent : passed
Output throughput is plausible : passed
Autonomy matches step-ins : passed
Step-ins do not exceed turns : passed
Retries agree with first-try result : passed
Evidence log SHA-256 matches : passed
Evidence log is substantial : passed

Evidence log

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    "canonicalModel": "claude-haiku-5-5",
    "provider": "firstParty",
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  "permission_denials": [],
  "terminal_reason": "completed",
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  "subagent_stats": {
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  "result": "I wrote `out/portfolio.json`. The best portfolio funds 7 projects worth 1,312k USD, using the full 622k USD budget and 2,698 of the 3,137 available hours.\n\n```json\n{\"selected\": [\"PRJ-A\",\"PRJ-C\",\"PRJ-E\",\"PRJ-F\",\"PRJ-H\",\"PRJ-L\",\"PRJ-M\"], \"total_value\": 1312, \"total_cost\": 622, \"total_hours\": 2698, \"value_if_budget_cut_10pct\": 1236}\n```\n\n- **Method:** with only 20 candidates I checked every subset (about 1M) for budget, hours, prerequisites and the two mutually exclusive pairs. This is exact, not a heuristic.\n- **Budget cut:** a 10% cut gives 559.8k USD. Costs are whole thousands, so this is the same as 559k. The best value under that limit is 1,236, with PRJ-H swapped out for PRJ-J.\n- **Output:** the file contains only the required keys and is written under `out/`. The solver script lives in `/tmp/portfolio/`, outside the work directory.",
  "ttft_ms": 2293,
  "type": "result",
  "duration_ms": 11151,
  "uuid": "[REDACTED]",
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  "time_to_request_ms": 245,
  "first_content_frame_ms": 1781,
  "queued_turn_count": 0,
  "result_index": 0
 }
]