jagreehal Confidence Levels
Critical rules
- Express confidence as a percentage, not vague certainty ("70% confident").
- Below 95%: mandatory "Why not 100%?" with gaps.
- Show the math: evidence adds, gaps subtract. Thorough presentation ≠ correctness.
- If confidence < 80% and you can gather more evidence yourself, gather first (
research-first). - Trigger words: "root cause is", "definitely", "certainly", "clearly", "obviously", "complete clarity".
- Before scoring or formatting, read references/scoring.md.
Workflow
- Inventory evidence (direct vs assumed). Strongest piece?
- Falsifiability: what would invalidate this? Did you look?
- Audit assumptions: mark each
[VERIFIED]or[ASSUMED]. - List alternatives and why yours is more likely.
- Score from ~50% using adjustments in the scoring reference; present in the standard format.
- If more evidence is reachable (search, read, run), gather and reassess before asking the user.
Resources
- references/scoring.md — scale, calibration, adjustments, format, examples, rationalizations. Read before stating a conclusion.
Validation
- Confidence expressed as a percentage
- Gaps explained when below 100%
- Evidence shown for the claimed %
- Self-gatherable evidence already gathered
- Falsifying evidence considered
Constraints
- Do not theatre-wrap trivially checkable facts (file exists, test passes) in percentages.
- Related:
research-first,critical-peer,concise-output,debugging-methodology.