Use a model for a constrained judgment, not for permissions or side effects:
authorized state + trusted typed questions -> validated model answers
-> deterministic policy -> act / wait / review / abstain -> observed outcome
Keep hard business rules, authority checks, thresholds, action execution, confirmation, and rollback in code or human control. A legal response shape does not imply a correct judgment; a high probability is not permission.
Start here
- Inspect the real application's state source, action boundary, tests, and deployment before changing it. Preserve existing deterministic/no-key behavior unless explicitly changing it is in scope.
- Fill
templates/decision-contract.md: trusted state, question IDs/types, allowed answers, unknown/review lane, side effects, owner, deadlines, and rollback. For tool control, also usetemplates/action-control-contract.md. New to this model class? Start withreferences/worked-decision-pilot.mdto choose one bounded decision, then usereferences/concepts-and-patterns.mdfor primitive semantics and composition. - Open only the matching reference below. Keep exact question instructions,
criteria, state paths, and thresholds in trusted configuration, not
user-supplied state. IDs are for application code; TypeSafe documents that
Jev does not send question IDs to the model, so put complete judgment
meaning in each instruction. Other providers may have different contracts.
For question wording or candidate extraction, read
references/question-design.md. - Validate response IDs, types, option sets, distributions, score rubric, and finite values before policy code; record returned model/version and enforce the pinned deployment identity. Treat malformed, unavailable, stale, or low-evidence results as the specified fallback.
- Verify on representative held-out data and the actual delivery boundary; record provider/model, question/policy revision, outcome, and failure lane without raw secrets or unnecessary personal data.
Before expanding a cross-model battery, complete
templates/decision-battery-design-review.md and review a small varied pilot.
Define whether a test counts a distinct scenario, a question, or a request;
freeze the answer rubric, comparison contract, and timing conditions before
generating more cases. If those definitions or reviewer labels disagree, stop
expansion and revise the design. Keep benchmark outputs outside this skill's
tracked corpus unless publication is explicitly requested.
Route by task
| Task | Read next |
|---|---|
| Design questions, choose candidates, or extract values from source text | references/question-design.md; for broader application compositions, references/use-case-patterns.md |
| Hosted Jev API or SDK integration | references/jev.md; run scripts/decision_demo.py offline first |
| CLM typed decisions, candidate ranking, Qwen3 encoder, fine-tuning, or private serving | references/clm.md |
| Laya checkpoints, routing, language, CPU/GPU/MPS | references/laya.md |
| Fine-tune the English Laya checkpoint on labeled typed decisions | references/laya-fine-tuning.md |
| Native C++ Laya inference, CUDA/Vulkan, or Jev-compatible HTTP | references/laya-cpp.md |
| Local or private/VPC Laya service | references/laya-self-hosting.md, then references/hosting-and-troubleshooting.md |
| Skill suggestions with progressive disclosure and no-fit rejection | references/implementation-audit.md |
| Rank shortlists with Score versus pairwise Choice, comparison graphs, Bradley–Terry, or ranking experiment readouts | references/pairwise-ranking.md; eval challenges in references/ranking-eval-review.md |
| Narration-to-media matching through captions or metadata; catalog answer/component selection | references/use-case-patterns.md |
| Browser/desktop/voice control, agent routing, ranking, guardrails, deadlines | references/use-case-patterns.md |
| Semantic code-lint rule design, local post-edit checks, graph scans, or feedback evaluation | references/semantic-lint-feedback.md; fill templates/semantic-lint-rule.md and templates/feedback-evaluation.md before a pilot |
| First System One pilot or worked evaluation of a decision, QA runner, or semantic CI gate | references/worked-decision-pilot.md |
| Learn from the 1,305-build field survey; identify implementation patterns and anti-patterns | references/field-patterns-and-antipatterns.md |
| Audit original browser, skill-router, supervisory, or moderation implementations | references/implementation-audit.md |
| Production QA step routing, cached replay, selector repair, or model substitution | references/qa-automation-pattern.md, then references/evaluation-and-calibration.md |
| DevOps telemetry routing, diagnostic test ranking, repair evidence, optional CI jobs, deployment transitions, or durable incident decisions | references/devops-decision-patterns.md and templates/decision-execution-record.md; operational procedures remain in SRE/QA/release and tool skills |
| Review the DevOps/escalation eval assertions and their satisfying, contradictory, or missing-evidence challenges | references/devops-escalation-eval-review.md |
| Confidence-based acceptance and escalation to a stronger judge | references/selective-judgment.md and templates/cascade-qualification.md |
| Probability, threshold, calibration, model comparison | references/evaluation-and-calibration.md and templates/benchmark-record.md |
| Design a matched comparison, qualify adapters, separate fixed-contract from model-adapted tracks, or assess equivalence | references/comparison-design.md and templates/benchmark-record.md |
| Compare singleton and batched request quality or calibration | references/request-shape-evaluation.md and templates/benchmark-record.md |
| Replace an LLM rubric judge, diagnose graded scale offsets, or test correlated judge errors | references/rubric-judge-research.md, then references/evaluation-and-calibration.md |
| Measure router ablations and full fallback economics | references/cascade-economics.md and templates/benchmark-record.md |
| Place a typed decision in a harness, define state/authority/recovery, or measure whole-task effects | harness-engineering and its System One placement guide and its offline round-trip examples; harness engineering owns the workflow boundary, while this skill owns typed questions, response validation, calibration, abstention, and model substitution |
| Implement the contract in PydanticAI, LangGraph, or LangChain | Use the matching framework skill for its integration seam; keep this skill's typed model contract and calibration rules authoritative |
| Determine whether a decision model improves an agent harness | agent-evals-and-observability for paired end-to-end tasks, trajectories, side effects, and cost/latency; keep this skill's model-level contract and calibration checks |
| Design or run a portable v1 label battery or provisional v2 cross-domain Choice/Noul/Score battery | references/decision-battery.md and templates/decision-battery-design-review.md; run scripts/decision_battery.py only after the pilot review |
| Synthetic QA pilot for Jev (failure triage, extra-test choice, semantic grading) | references/qa-pilot.md; run scripts/jev_qa_pilot.py offline first |
| Paired-eval semantic assertion audit in CI | references/qa-pilot.md, then scripts/jev_eval_audit.py; treat its verdicts as advisory and preserve exact grader results |
| Reproduce, operate, diagnose, or roll back this repository's Jev CI deployment | references/jev-ci-reference-deployment.md; inspect the current workflow before changing secrets or jobs |
| Screen Jev's advisory eval judgments against real outputs | references/qa-pilot.md and references/evaluation-and-calibration.md; use scripts/jev_eval_calibration.py for a blind packet, then independent labels or scripts/jev_teacher_label.py for model-teacher pseudo-labels |
| Select among Jev, Laya, CLM, GLiNER2.5-Decide, or another candidate | references/ecosystem-radar.md; then the selected model reference |
| Screen newer open typed-decision candidates from primary evidence | references/open-decision-candidates.md; then use references/comparison-design.md before benchmarking |
| Experimental Strands Decider local inference, pointer-head semantics, context limits, or source-only vision | references/strands-decider.md; qualify the native adapter before comparison; eval changes in references/strands-eval-review.md |
| Fastino GLiNER2.5-Decide local classification | references/gliner25-decide.md |
| Fine-tune GLiNER2 for Decide-style classification | references/gliner25-decide-fine-tuning.md |
| Failure, latency, device fallback, upgrade, rollback | references/hosting-and-troubleshooting.md |
For a hosted provider integration, refresh the provider's live documentation
index, then read the current API or selected SDK reference and the nearest
cookbook before coding. references/jev.md contains the Jev-specific route and
fallback procedure; its endpoint and contract details are a dated snapshot.
Run python3 scripts/systemone_probe.py --request examples/request.json for an offline
contract check. Add --live only when the user has authorized transmitting
that state and incurring cost. For local Laya, scripts/laya_service.py
requires a pinned local model directory and a runtime secret; it is a private
reference adapter, not a public Internet service.
Cross-cutting limits
- Jev is managed/API-only; do not invent a self-hosted Jev weight download.
- Laya, CLM, and Jev can share a typed application interface, but not assumed thresholds, calibration, latency, language behavior, or model quality.
- Before enabling Laya caller traffic, keep ingress private and authenticated;
define finite, application-specific caps for request bytes, question count,
options per Choice, concurrency, queue wait, and total deadline. Readiness waits
for the pinned model, tokenizer, actual device, and any calibration artifact the
application uses. The bundled adapter's
/readyzchecks device residency only; extend it to cover every required artifact before routing production traffic. - For large Laya Choice sets, check tokenized labels against the head-token
budget, verifying coverage and truncation; an option-count transport cap does
not prove quality. If shortlisting, measure recall and treat probabilities as
conditional on exactly the retained candidate set. Prefer
other,unknown, or review when labels are not exhaustive. Seereferences/laya.md. - Independent questions may share one call, but test the exact batched request shape on frozen cases. Dependent questions need another call when the first answer changes their state or candidate set.
- Predeclare whether a comparison holds decision semantics fixed or compares
separately adapted model-plus-adapter systems. Qualify adapter polarity,
schema, and overflow behavior before scoring; a compatible response shape is
not evidence of semantic parity. Record the protocol in
templates/benchmark-record.md. - Validate error discrimination separately from probability calibration before confidence-based escalation. Freeze the route on selection data, then test absolute accepted risk and fallback rescue/regression on untouched units. Unsupported evidence or expired state cannot be overridden by confidence.
- A fallback judge or multi-provider agreement is not independent correctness
evidence. Measure shared errors and held-out rescue/regression before claiming
cascade quality gains; see
references/rubric-judge-research.md. - A semantic lint result is a model judgment, not proof that a code rule is satisfied. Keep syntax/schema checks deterministic, semantic findings reviewable, and gates advisory until independent grouped holdouts measure false passes, false blocks, abstention, drift, and complete task cost.
- A model cannot replace exact arithmetic, provenance, eligibility, safety reflexes, or irreversible approval. A text-generating model may be a separate bounded stage after a typed route, not an implicit source of authority.
Finish an integration only when its contract, held-out evaluation, failure path, deployment/readiness check, and rollback record exist. For diagnosis, stop after the smallest evidence identifies the boundary and one recheck verifies a fix, or after three non-converging passes with evidence for the owner. Do not generalize from a single demo or vendor benchmark.
When not to use
Use ml-engineering for general training strategy; docker-compose or
kubernetes for their serving infrastructure; ai-governance for
organization-wide authority design. Use a generative-model skill for prose,
open-ended planning, or long reasoning without a typed-decision contract.
Framework handoff
The harness provides authorized, versioned state, candidate/route bounds, task goal, deadline, and the outcome to verify. This skill consumes that evidence under a pinned question/rubric/model contract and returns validated typed answers, model identity/revision, and an explicit unknown or failure lane. PydanticAI, LangGraph, and LangChain carry and route the result through their own documented seams; deterministic policy decides the next workflow step. The harness returns observed effects and accepted-task outcomes for end-to-end evaluation. Keep question/model calibration evidence inside this skill, and use harness-engineering for placement, authority, recovery, and whole-task evidence.
Authoritative business rules
For business-policy translation, route to spec-driven-development's policy recipe and release contract. Use deterministic code for approved rules; retrieval explains clauses and bounded model judgments route uncertain evidence to review. Neither a typed judgment nor eligibility grants execution authority.