Decision runs
What happens between submitting a decision and getting a verdict slip.
A decision run is one pass through the solvemax engine — from your description of the decision to a finished verdict slip. Every run, free or paid, web or API, goes through the same five stages, streamed live if you're watching it happen on the web UI.
The stages
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Interrogate | The engine asks 2–3 sharp questions — only the ones you're uniquely positioned to answer (preferences, non-negotiables, risk appetite), never facts it could research or safely assume. Your answers are locked as facts before any scoring starts. |
| Generate | It widens the option field, including alternatives you didn't list. |
| Score | Weighted criteria are locked and pinned to the slip before grading — so the scoring rules can't be quietly adjusted to fit a preferred answer. |
| Simulate | The locked matrix is stress-tested across 5,000 simulated futures — weights and scores jittered — to measure how often the leading option actually wins rather than just barely edging out. |
| Red team | The engine attacks its own winning answer, looking for the way it fails, and runs a pre-mortem. |
| Verify | A second, independent model pass receives the bare facts — no scores, no conclusion — and derives its own winner from scratch. Agreement or disagreement is reported honestly. |
Modes
solvemax detects which of three modes fits your decision, or you can set it explicitly:
DECIDE— the default. You describe the decision; the engine generates and scores candidate options itself.COMPARE— you supply fixed options; the engine scores exactly those, nothing added.GRILL— you give it a plan to attack. Each component of the plan gets verdictedKEEP/FIX/KILL, and the headline states what must change.
Interrogation: auto-answer
On the web, you answer the clarifying questions yourself, or tap the engine's recommended pick.
Through the API, you can set auto: true (the default) and the engine answers its own
clarifying questions using its recommended picks — useful when you're calling solvemax
programmatically and don't want a round trip for the questions.
Length limits
| Caller | Limit |
|---|---|
| Anonymous / free-signup-credit | 6,000 characters |
| Signed-in, paid | 20,000 characters |
API (/api/v1/verdict) | 20,000 characters |
What a run costs
Every run spends exactly 1 credit, deducted the moment the run starts. If the run fails for any reason, the credit is automatically refunded — see Stopping a run and Refunds.