Decision rules

Every public conclusion has one owning layer and a ceiling set by the weakest required evidence. These rules prevent execution, scientific acceptance, grounding, recommendation, feasibility, and authorization from collapsing into one vague “successful” state.

Route the question to its owner

Question	Owning layer	Required record	Cannot establish alone
did the scientific transformation satisfy its contract?	Core	accepted and rejected records, policy, provenance, benchmark result	reproducible execution or biological truth
what ran and can the run be reopened?	Runtime	environment, state history, artifacts, hashes, replay result	scientific acceptance
what supports or contradicts the claim?	Knowledge	source lineage, evidence graph, confidence policy, review revision	recommended action
which action is defensible and stable?	Intelligence	candidates, policy, alternatives, challenge, calibration, regret, posture	laboratory authorization
can the proposed work proceed responsibly?	Lab	design, readiness, controls, resources, authority, custody	successful physical execution
may the repository publish the combined claim?	release governance	all required owner records and current blockers	stronger evidence than those records contain

flowchart LR
    C["Core acceptance"] --> R["Runtime replay"]
    R --> K["Knowledge grounding"]
    K --> I["Intelligence posture"]
    I --> L["Lab feasibility and outcome"]
    L --> G["release decision"]
    C -. no shortcut .-> G
    R -. no shortcut .-> G

Decision rules

• Use the weakest required layer. A strong benchmark cannot compensate for a refused rerun, unresolved contradiction, unstable recommendation, or infeasible follow-up.
• Preserve non-success states. Rejected, refused, failed, held, and inconclusive records are valid outcomes and remain visible in synthesis.
• Keep versions joined. A public conclusion names the exact scientific result, run bundle, evidence revision, decision policy, and Lab record it combines.
• Do not borrow authority. A package may consume another package’s artifact without inheriting ownership of its meaning.
• Append changed decisions. New evidence or policy produces a superseding record; it does not rewrite the prior decision.
• Narrow before extrapolating. Missing transfer, calibration, consequence, or external evidence lowers the claim instead of becoming an optimistic assumption.

Common invalid inferences

Observed fact	Invalid inference	Required next evidence
command exited successfully	scientific result is accepted	Core acceptance and rejection record
artifact bytes are stable	workflow is scientifically valid	benchmark and scientific contract evidence
source is cited	claim is supported in this context	Knowledge edge, context, and review state
candidate ranks first	action should be taken	challenge, regret, authority, and consequence
batch is ready	experiment succeeded	external observation and QC
one workflow family is strong	repository-wide authority is strong	independent evidence for every claimed family

Use Decision Support to follow the complete record and Workflow Families for the current family-specific ceilings.