How it works · Property 3

Governance pipeline.

Every swarm is in one of five governance stages. Transitions are documented in the monthly Calibration Report. The stage tells you what kind of capital is running through the swarm and what scrutiny it is under.

Each stage

Five stages, read in plain sight.

Paper
The swarm runs on real market data but with no real capital. Decisions are recorded. Performance is measured but never claimed. Internal use only.
Minimum 90 days in paper before promotion to canary.
Canary
The swarm runs on small real capital — typically founder funds, sometimes early qualified-client allocations under an explicit canary-stage agreement. The breaker is active. Performance is measured against pre-registered hypotheses.
Minimum 90 days in canary before promotion to live.
Live
The swarm runs on full capital from all subscribed users, per their tier. Brier scores are continuously monitored. Performance is disclosed monthly in the Calibration Report.
Degraded
A live swarm whose Brier score has regressed significantly, or whose realized drawdown has diverged from expected. Capital is reduced or stopped. Investigation begins. Outcome: either fix-and-relaunch or retire.
Retired
The swarm is permanently archived. Subscriptions close. The audit log is preserved per the retention policy.

Promotion criteria

The gates between stages.

Promotion criteria are not trade secrets — they are governance defaults documented per swarm.

Promotion paper → canary requires

A swarm earns small real capital only after it has proved itself on real data.

≥ 90 days in paper mode
Cumulative Brier score within target range
No simulated breaker-triggering events that would invalidate the thesis
Documented “what we’d do differently” if the historical context were live capital

Promotion canary → live requires

Full subscriber capital is the last gate, and it has the most signatures on it.

≥ 90 days in canary mode
Cumulative Brier score within target range (canary allows higher uncertainty)
Realized drawdown within breaker bounds
No correlated-failure events with other live swarms
Founder + Argonaut Council approval

Demotion live → degraded triggers automatically when

Demotion is not a judgement call alone — two of its three triggers fire on their own.

Brier score regresses beyond threshold over a rolling 30-day window, or
Realized drawdown exceeds threshold over a rolling 30-day window, or
Manual trigger by the Argonaut Council

On the record

Every transition is on the record.

Promotions, demotions, and retirements are documented in the monthly Calibration Report — so the stage you see is a claim we have already published, not one we make on demand.

See the Calibration Reports →Back to how it works →