# Turn judgment calls into checks over facts

Where criteria can be stated as checks over facts, state them as checks. The mechanical gate beat model discretion; save judgment for the drafting.

From the [Learned the hard way](../index.md#learned) section of [The Muse Field Guide](../index.md).

## The claim

That gates over human attention should run on stated checks over facts, not on a model's case-by-case discretion.

## What happened

When the ask-or-not eval showed model judgment at coin-flip level, the replacement was not a better model. It was a rules-only gate over checkable facts: the same class of decision, made by criteria that can be written down, tested, and audited. The household's question filter and pre-flight checklist descend from that eval, three mechanisms on.

## Where this came from

Fluent judgment and reliable judgment are different things, and the gap is invisible from inside any single decision. The gate stays mechanical where the criteria are checkable.

Related resources: [Don't let a model decide what to ask you](verdict-model-as-judge.md), [The question pre-flight checklist](question-preflight-checklist.md)

Canonical page: https://www.niclydon.io/muse/items/verdict-rules-over-facts.html