Tiers & Suitability
How 0-10 scores map to Prime, Core, and Edge tiers, published-tier stability, and institutional suitability labels.
Tier Mapping
| Tier | Score Range | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Prime | 8.0 - 10.0 | Strong relative resilience under current evidence |
| Core | 5.0 - 7.9 | Moderate resilience with meaningful constraints |
| Edge | 0.0 - 4.9 | Elevated or unresolved risk pressure |
Tiers are relative classifications, not guarantees or recommendations.
The Prime cutoff is set at 8.0 so reaching Prime requires genuine strength across the four vectors. A vault cannot land in Prime purely on the back of one dominant vector when the others are mediocre.
Published-Tier Stability
The API publishes a stabilized tier rather than every instantaneous boundary crossing. The raw score remains visible, but the public tier can dwell briefly during a boundary move.
| Move type | Dwell |
|---|---|
| Promotion | 6 hours |
| Demotion | 24 hours |
A reversal during the dwell window resets the clock. Severe demotions bypass dwell through hard floors.
| Current published tier | Immediate demotion floor |
|---|---|
| Prime | Score below 7.75 |
| Core | Score below 4.75 |
This keeps public tiers stable near boundaries while still publishing material deterioration immediately.
Provenance Fields
Each score run records provenance that lets consumers tie a score to inputs and methodology.
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
run_id | Unique score-run identifier |
methodology_version | Active scoring methodology version |
input_snapshot_hash | Hash of the score-run input snapshot |
fail_safe_mode | normal, degraded, or fail_closed |
Vault responses surface run provenance through their risk vectors and score-run references.
Suitability Labels
Alongside the numeric tier, the methodology emits a suitability label that captures governance and evidence requirements on top of score.
| Suitability | Rule |
|---|---|
| institutional | reviewed + final score ≥ 8.0 + no hard-fail flags + high-confidence evidence |
| qualified | reviewed or provisional + final score ≥ 5.0 |
| speculative | reviewed or provisional but below qualified, or constrained by caps |
| not_assessed | unreviewed |
Suitability and tier are distinct. Tier describes the score range. Suitability adds governance and evidence requirements on top of the score.
A Prime-tier vault can still fall short of institutional if evidence confidence or review status is insufficient. Conversely, institutional requires both a Prime score and clean governance and evidence state.
What Forces A Lower Outcome
Score-limiting constraints are explicit and explainable.
- asset-level cap cascade for review status, hard-fail flags, overrides, and staleness
- unresolved address fallback to strict unreviewed behavior
- portfolio-level concentration, correlation, and wrong-way penalties
- asset-quality drag and hard caps for lower-quality assets
- unaudited protocol versions cap the vault composite at 4.9
- history tier ceiling
- active-incident ceiling
- fail-safe operational mode
Practical Reading Guidance
- A Prime tier can still be non-institutional if evidence confidence or governance criteria are insufficient.
- A Core or Edge tier often indicates one or more binding caps.
- When fail-safe mode is
fail_closed, no score is served by design.