How to reach a cause you can defend. The standard debugging arc (reproduce, isolate, investigate, hypothesize, fix) is assumed; this file covers where that arc yields a confident wrong answer.

Evidence

Every finding carries a file:line and a tier, never a score. A confidence number produced in the same pass as the investigation never contradicts it, so nothing downstream reads a low score and looks further.

verified: a command was run, or the exact lines were read. The finding carries the command and its output, or the citation, so anyone can re-run it and get the same answer.
inferred: derived from evidence actually read, but the conclusion itself was never observed. State the evidence and the inferential step, so the step can be disputed.
assumed: from convention, prior knowledge, or the user's framing; nothing was checked. State what would confirm it.

Coverage is an observable boundary, not a percentage: name the files and symbols actually read, what was not examined and why, and the query that established the boundary (the aitools search pattern, the find_referencing_symbols call, the directory walked) so a reader can re-run it and judge whether it was exhaustive.

investigation-patterns

Evidence