The One Decision That Matters Most, Right Now
Every domain generates pending decisions, and a leader can’t watch four queues at once. CORTEX scores each pending decision on one deterministic scale - decision_risk = 100 · trust_drop · exposure · urgency - and surfaces the single highest-risk item across finance, security, HR, and growth. Every ranked item ends in a clear next move: approve, challenge, or block.
Illustrative product view
One scale, so you can compare apples to access grants
A $480k wire to a brand-new payee and an off-hours admin grant on production are not the same kind of thing - but a leader still has to know which to look at first. CORTEX makes them comparable by scoring both on one deterministic formula, so a security decision and a finance decision land in the same ranked queue with numbers you can defend.
The ranking formula
decision_risk = 100 · trust_drop · exposure · urgency
trust_drop is how far this action falls below the actor’s established trust baseline; exposure is the blast radius if it’s wrong (dollars, data, or people affected); urgency is how little time remains before it commits. All three are normalized 0–1, so the score is a bounded 0–100 that is directly comparable across domains.
Every ranked item ends in a decision
| Band | Outcome | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Low | Approve | Within the actor’s trust baseline and exposure tolerance - proceed, sealed to the ledger |
| Medium | Challenge | Step-up required - a named human confirms before it commits |
| High | Block | Held out of the flow until reviewed; nothing auto-commits |
The queue is never just a list of alarms. Each item carries its recommended move and the factors behind it, so the person on call spends their attention on the one decision most likely to matter - not on triaging four dashboards.
What’s live, and what stays off
Frequently asked questions
How does CORTEX rank decisions across different domains?
It scores every pending decision on one deterministic formula - decision_risk = 100 · trust_drop · exposure · urgency - where trust_drop, exposure, and urgency are each normalized 0–1. That produces a bounded 0–100 score that’s directly comparable, so a finance wire and a security access grant sit in one ranked queue.
What do trust_drop, exposure, and urgency mean?
trust_drop is how far the action falls below the actor’s established trust baseline; exposure is the blast radius if it’s wrong - dollars, data, or people affected; urgency is how little time remains before it commits. All three are normalized, then multiplied and scaled to 0–100.
Is the ranking a black-box model?
No. It’s deterministic: the same inputs always yield the same score and the same factor breakdown, with no sampling or model drift. An auditor or controller can re-derive exactly why one decision outranked another.
What happens to a highly ranked decision?
Every ranked item resolves to a move - approve, challenge (step-up by a named human), or block (held out of the flow). CORTEX decides and records the outcome and can gate the action; it does not auto-execute it.
Are all four domains scored today?
Finance is live and ranked in-process. Security, HR, and growth use the same contract and formula but each adapter is off unless its service is env-configured, and it fails soft - an unconfigured domain reads as “not evaluated,” never a fabricated score.
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Rank your riskiest decision
See CORTEX put finance and security decisions on one scale and surface the single one to act on first.
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