Text annotation tools assume that their user’s goal is to create a labeled corpus. However,users view annotation as a necessary evil on the way to deliver business value through NLP.Thus an annotation tool should optimize for the throughput of the global NLP process, not only the productivity of individual annotators. LightTag is a text annotation tool designed and built on that principle. This paper shares our design rationale, data modeling choices, and user interface decisions then illustrates how those choices serve the full NLP lifecycle.