Refresh May documentation bundle

[briancl2]

Summary

Refreshes, expands, and then consolidates the May 2026 public cost-optimization bundle without changing the shipped newsletter text, shipped newsletter links, or Discussion #21.

Phase 1 expanded the bundle and made CUSTOMER_COMPANION.md the canonical landing page. Phase 2 (this update) cuts redundancy from 13 public files to 9, adds real technical depth (exact before/after token counts, links to the actual workflow code, and an illustrative dollar translation), and standardizes a Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) block on every retained file.

Commits

• Private source: briancl2/briancl2-customer-newsletter@497edae
• Staging public: github/briancl2-customer-newsletter-public@0f0d8d2
• CustomerNewsletter branch: 8d20015

Public file set (13 to 9)

Retained, each with a standard BLUF block:

• README.md -- bundle map and read path, rewritten to the 9-file set
• START_HERE.md -- slimmed to a thin pointer back to the companion
• CUSTOMER_COMPANION.md -- canonical shipped-newsletter landing page with role routing
• ADMIN_FINOPS_GUIDE.md -- NEW; merges admin readiness + FinOps (budgets, reporting, governance, attribution, showback)
• DEVELOPER_GUIDE.md -- NEW; merges developer workflow + worked examples
• NEWSLETTER_SYSTEM_RELEASE_NOTES.md -- repurposed into a technical deep dive with exact before/after token counts, code links, request/tool-call deltas, and an illustrative API-equivalent cost translation
• PRODUCT_FEATURE_QUICK_HITS.md -- first-party feature inventory
• NEWSLETTER_MAY_COST_SECTION.md -- verbatim newsletter excerpt (provenance)
• PUBLIC_SOURCES.md -- consolidated public source list

Retired (merged into the files above; removed from the allowlist and added to the prune list so the target copies are deleted): EXECUTIVE_SUMMARY.md, ADMIN_READINESS_GUIDE.md, FINOPS_PLAYBOOK.md, DEVELOPER_WORKFLOW_GUIDE.md, WORKED_EXAMPLES.md, PRODUCT_FEATURES_FOR_COST_MANAGEMENT.md.

Technical depth added

The deep dive now reports exact before/after aggregate token totals (fixed-corpus ~7,846,260 to ~5,699,291, roughly -27%; current-cycle ~9,001,070 to ~4,957,442, roughly -45%), request and tool-call deltas, and an illustrative ~$3 per million blended API-equivalent translation derived from the system's own output-shape matched-pair data and citing the public OpenAI pricing page. Dollar figures are framed as illustrative API-equivalent estimates on direct provider tokens, not a GitHub Copilot bill, and one model is named only as an illustrative example.

Shipped-content invariant

No edits were made to output/2026-05_may_newsletter.md, Discussion #21, or the shipped newsletter's link target. All bundle resources are reached through CUSTOMER_COMPANION.md and the in-bundle links.

Public/private boundary

The public bundle keeps illustrative/estimate framing and explicit non-billing caveats. It does not publish private run logs, exact private token tables, private evidence paths, source-note directories, planning/runs/workspace internals, or billing-savings claims.

Validation

• Private source: make test-all passed all required suites including the Control-Surface Drift Guard
• Staging public: publisher sensitive scan passed; make test-all passed required suites with expected private-fixture/config skips
• CustomerNewsletter: make test-all passed required suites with expected skips
• Newsletter validators: February, April, and May all passed with 0 warnings
• Sensitive/internal marker scan: clean over the 9 allowlisted bundle files and the target repo
• Internal link check: 0 broken relative links across the retained set
• git diff --check: clean