Mercury 3 Migration Playbook

A focused, actionable migration guide for teams moving from Inception Labs' Mercury 2 / 2.5 to Mercury 3 before the November 15, 2026 access cutoff. What's inside (18 pages, PDF): Pricing breakdown — launch promo ($0.10 in / $0.35 out per 1M tokens) vs list pricing ($0.20 / $0.70), cached input at 90% off, and three worked cost examples. The effort-tier trap: Inception's benchmarks ran at medium effort, but the Mercury 3 API defaults to low when the parameter is omitted (2/2.5 defaulted to medium) — set it explicitly on day one. Temperature floor 0.5, context window changes (1M in / 131K max out), and channel differences (Inception API, OpenRouter, Baseten, Vercel). A 4-week migration checklist with a week-by-week task list through the November 15 cutoff. A 12-point pre-cutover verification checklist. Every figure is sourced from Inception's official pricing and docs; unverified items are marked as such. Refunds: 30-day money-back guarantee — if it doesn't save you an hour, full refund, no questions asked.