"Embed first, chunk later" is the right framing, most teams treat chunking as a one-time tuning step when it's actually deciding how much context survives retrieval.

The honest cost table stands out most though, most migration writeups only show numbers that justify the move. Admitting HF Spaces still wins on raw cost for bursty workloads makes the self-hosting case land harder, since it's clearly not being oversold as cheaper.