About
The purpose, evidence policy, authorship, and publisher-interest disclosure behind this independent executive doctrine.
Publisher disclosure. Decision Grade is an independent guiding doctrine for executives. It is published by VALIS Systems and authored by David Lundblad, its founder. VALIS builds commercial products related to the problem this framework addresses and therefore has an interest in the doctrine being useful and adopted. Nothing else on this site should be read as a product description, capability claim, or proof for the publisher.
Why this site exists
AI has made it easier to produce professional-looking work. The harder question is what that work supports before a person, agent, or system relies on it.
This site offers a public doctrine for answering that question:
- declare the intended use;
- establish what entered the process;
- test claims, assumptions, evidence, arithmetic, and reasoning;
- separate in-document support from outside truth;
- preserve material uncertainty and disagreement;
- distinguish completion from clearance; and
- keep future-facing work conditional as it moves farther from evidence.
The aim is not to make every document certain. It is to give the next responsible reader a stronger basis for judgment.
Independence of the doctrine
The framework stands apart from any implementation.
Its principles can be used to evaluate a direct model review, an internal workflow, a professional-service process, a software product, or a human review practice. No particular architecture, vendor, model, or brand earns trust merely by adopting the language.
The doctrine should be judged by whether its claims are clear, its evidence is bounded, its limits are visible, and its proposed tests can be run by someone who does not share the author's interest.
Evidence policy
The active research case uses work published or materially updated on or after April 1, 2026. Older sources are retired from the active case unless an explicit exception is recorded. Primary legal and public records are treated separately from research and used only for the bounded point they directly establish.
Every material statistic should travel with its source type, population or task, unit, denominator, and limit. A vendor page can establish what the vendor says it offers. It cannot independently establish comparative performance.
The current evidence and open gaps are collected on Current evidence and What to measure.
Commitments to the reader
Source-visible
Material external claims link to the primary source where available. Research limits sit next to the result they constrain.
Contestable
The public repository accepts substantive corrections and disagreements through issues and pull requests.
Machine-readable
The framework is available through llms.txt, the full-text bundle, and a public MCP server.
Reusable
Content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. You may share and adapt it with attribution.
What this site is not
This is not legal advice, investment advice, a product specification, or a guarantee that a particular document or system is fit for use. It is not a substitute for the accountable person's judgment.
The language is intended to make claims easier to test, not to make the author or publisher immune from challenge.
Author and contact
David Lundblad is the author of this framework.
Last substantive review: August 17, 2026.