Guides

Reading a verdict slip

A field-by-field guide to what's on the slip.

This walks a slip in the order it actually renders, top to bottom.

Headline & summary

The one-line verdict, a plain-language summary, and the biggest assumption the whole verdict rests on — printed explicitly so you can check it before trusting the rest.

Win rate & confidence

The big number is the leader's win rate across 5,000 simulated futures, with a ROBUST or CLOSE CALL flag and a separate confidence percentage next to it. See Confidence & verification for what these actually measure and how they differ.

Podium

Every option, ranked, with its raw score and its win rate. Higher-ranked options that lost only narrowly are visible here, not hidden behind the winner.

Dual verdict

When the objectively strongest option (pure merit) and the option that best fits your stated preferences disagree, the slip shows both explicitly, along with the quality-to-fit weighting that produced the split. When they agree, the slip says so plainly instead of manufacturing a distinction that isn't there.

Exit plan

The pre-registered kill criteria and early-warning indicator — see Tripwires & reminders.

The honest trade-off & the runner-up's case

Two short lines that most tools skip: what you're giving up by taking the winner, and what choosing the runner-up would actually have bought you. The runner-up's case is not a hedge — it's there so a close call doesn't get dressed up as an obvious one.

The scored matrix (fold)

Every criterion, its weight, and every option's raw score against it — the numbers the verdict was computed from, visible rather than just asserted. Criteria marked "(cost)" are inverted (lower is better); criteria marked "[fit]" come from your personal answers rather than objective scoring.

Stress tests (fold)

The Monte Carlo result in full, plus flip-points (how much a criterion's weight would need to shift to change the winner) and the minimax-regret cross-check — a second, independent scoring method that sometimes disagrees with the win-rate leader.

Red team

Each attack the engine ran against its own winning answer, its answer to that attack, and a pre-mortem ("if this fails in six months, here's why").

Independent verification

The audit result — see Confidence & verification for what CONFIRMED, CONFIRMED*, CONTESTED, and UNAUDITED each mean.

Action bar

Copy link, copy as Markdown, save as PDF, download matrix.json, email the slip. See Sharing & revisiting.

On this page