Recommendation boundary
Do not let a weak diagnosis produce a strong prescription.
A recommendation is downstream of a Finding. If the Finding is provisional, disputed, or weakly supported, the recommendation should reflect that evidence state instead of sounding absolute.
Recommendations inherit uncertainty.
If the evidence weakly favors a distribution-shift explanation, a reversible distribution experiment may be justified while an expensive rebrand or complete content pivot is not. WITNESS can distinguish the strength of the action from the strength of the evidence.
Recommendation structure
Finding
What explanation is currently best supported?
Evidence strength
How much trust and discrimination does the available evidence justify?
Action
What decision or experiment logically follows if the Finding is true?
Reversibility
How costly is it to be wrong, and can the action be tested safely?
Success evidence
What observations would support the intervention working?
Stop/change condition
What new evidence should cancel, alter, or escalate the recommendation?
Sometimes the recommendation is “investigate next.”
When competing explanations remain unresolved, the most useful next action may be to gather the discriminating evidence rather than optimizing around a guess. WITNESS treats evidence collection as a legitimate recommendation.