Glossary term
Evidence grade
Also: Evidence honesty layer, Source grading
A grade attached to each claim in a decision memo, showing whether the claim is backed by primary source, vendor-confirmed evidence, independent research, or an assumption. Assumption-heavy memos carry visible warnings rather than quiet confidence.
Memo quality often fails not at the conclusion, but at the evidence under each claim. A vendor-confirmed data point reads identically to a Slack-thread rumour unless the memo is structured to mark the difference.
A usable evidence grade scheme is small: primary (vendor documentation, signed contract language, certification artefact), independent (analyst report, security questionnaire, customer reference), internal (interview, architecture review) and assumed. A memo with more than 30 percent assumed claims is flagged, not published.
Evidence grading is the foundation of the anti-hallucination layer in DecisionOS. Every factual claim in a generated memo section must carry a grade; ungraded claims are blocked from the final output rather than smoothed over.
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