01
A confidence score
Built from the width of the ensemble, the length of the horizon, how much of the spread comes from parameters, and whether any historical episode sits close to the scenario.
Method and limits
A simulator that will not tell you where it is weak is a toy. This is the part of the product most tools leave out.
What every run reports about itself
02
Two kinds of not knowing
Shock uncertainty is the world being unlucky. Parameter uncertainty is the model not knowing a coefficient. They are reported separately, because only the second one can be narrowed by better research.
03
A sensitivity pass
Every parameter is moved twenty percent either side of its central value on an otherwise identical run, and the result is ranked by how far it moved the answer.
04
Historical analogues
The scenario is scored on nine axes and compared with eighteen real episodes scored the same way, from the 1930 tariffs to the 2021 chip shortage. When nothing is close the page says the model is extrapolating.
05
Every assumption
Each lever with its window, plus the structural assumptions: build lags, expectations anchoring, retaliation probability, annual steps and the absence of a real financial sector.
What it cannot do
It cannot model a person
A leader taking an unexpected call at three in the afternoon is outside anything a state variable can carry.
It steps a year at a time
A bank run or a two week panic is invisible unless it leaves a mark on the year.
It has no real financial sector
Credit enters through a risk premium and a crisis hazard, not through balance sheets.
Trade is a network, not a ledger
It gets the direction and rough size of a trade shock, not a specific firm's supply chain.
Its starting state is part estimate
Errors in the base year propagate through every year after. The monitor marks which rows are which and the refresh replaces what it can.
Its priors are judgements
The ensemble shows the consequences of that uncertainty. It does not remove it.
How to use it honestly
Use it to find the shape of a problem, the direction and rough size of an effect, the second and third order consequences you had not thought of, and the assumptions your view depends on. Do not use it to produce a number for a slide with no range attached to it. The range is the answer.