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Open Professional
Professional methodology
What Vigil Professional is

Chapter 06

Analyse

Two instruments, and neither of them predicts anything. Compare sets two records against each other on the dimensions they themselves carry; Scenario Lab holds conditions you choose and reports what the record says at them.

Compare

Two objects of one kind, on the dimensions their own records carry.

Pick a kind — Watch questions, observable records, actors, standing scopes — then pick A and B. The result is a column each, row by row: where each stands, what would move it, what has held, what evidence it rests on, what it cannot establish.

Two observable records side by side across ten dimensions, eight of which differ: what is being checked, the current reading with its date, what would constitute movement, and what has held — one from Iran–Gulf on war-risk cover, one from the Taiwan Strait on payment continuity.
Two observable records from different modules. The dimensions are the ones both records carry; the header says how many differ.

NOT COMPARABLE

Where one record carries a dimension and the other does not, the row says so and gives the reason.

A comparison row headed “Only on the left”: the Iran–Gulf question lists two recorded-activity series — maritime disruption and energy infrastructure strikes — while the Sahel question reads, in italics, “Not comparable — no recorded-activity series bears on this question”.
  1. The section header: this dimension exists on one side only.
  2. What the left-hand record holds.
  3. The right-hand record, and why it is not comparable — this module maintains no activity series.
A real example: the Iran–Gulf question has two recorded-activity series; the Sahel question has none, because Sahel maintains none.

NOT COMPARABLE is a resultIt is not a gap, not a failure and not something to work around. Filling the cell in would produce an empty column a reader takes for a zero — and a zero is a claim. There is no winner, no score and no forced symmetry anywhere in Compare.

A comparison can be saved, taken into the Brief Builder row by row with To brief, or exported as Markdown.

Scenario Lab

Hold a condition, and read the record at it.

18 templates across 6 of 6 modules. Each is an authored question — if this were the case for a stated period, which parts of the recorded system become relevant, affected or stressed? — with the conditions you can set, the rules that respond to them, and the records those rules rest on.

  1. Your assumption

    A condition you choose to hold: a duration, a geographic extent, an instrument in force or not.

    Yours. Vigil does not say it will occur.

  2. Authored rule

    An editor wrote it, gated on your options. A rule your choices do not meet is shown greyed rather than hidden.

    Nothing is generated.

  3. Conditional implication

    What follows inside the recorded system if those conditions held — first order, then second.

    Each states its own unknowns.

  4. Vigil record

    The canonical records the implication rests on, with their own dates, confidence and sources.

    Checkable, one link away.

The four steps, and the product prints them on the surface that runs them — see the next screenshot.
Four numbered steps: 1, your assumption — yours, nothing you choose changes a record; 2, an authored rule an editor wrote, gated on your options; 3, the conditional implication, eleven first-order and five second-order, each with its own unknowns; 4, the Vigil record, cited with its own dates, confidence and sources — nothing is generated.
The method, printed on the instrument. A reader can check it against what they are looking at without leaving the run.

Setting assumptions

The assumptions rail, marked “yours”: four families — duration of the disruption (7, 30 or 90 days), geographic extent, fixed bypasses and war-risk cover — each with a paragraph explaining what the family governs and a set of options, one of which is selected.
  1. The rail is marked “yours”. Everything in it is your choice.
  2. Each family explains what it governs before it offers options.
  3. The selected option. Changing it re-gates every rule that depends on it.
Four assumption families in this template. The line at the foot of the rail restates the whole set you are currently holding.

The run's figures update as you change them: how many implications are active of how many the template holds, how many conditions would invalidate the premise, how many canonical records are engaged, and how many things it does not model.

Reading a run

  • First and second order. First-order implications follow from the assumptions; second-order ones follow from the first. The distinction is the template's, and it is worth respecting — a second-order implication carries the uncertainty of everything above it.
  • Greyed implications are rules your current set does not reach. They are shown so you can see what the template holds and what it would take to get there.
  • Invalidators are the conditions that would make the premise itself wrong. If one of them is on the record, the run is answering a question that no longer holds — read them first.
  • Not modelled is the list of what the template deliberately does not cover.
A panel headed “Not modelled”, listing five things the template deliberately does not cover: naval operations and operational detail of the strait’s contest; price paths, freight rates and effects on named companies; Iranian decision-making; the ground war in Yemen beyond the coast; and casualty or damage estimates of any kind.
Every template publishes this. It is the reason the rest of the template is worth reading.

Scenario Lab does not forecastA run carries no probability, no likelihood, no score and no horizon. It never says a condition will occur, is likely, or is more likely than another. It says: if you hold this, here is what the record says becomes relevant, and here is what it cannot tell you. The restraint is the feature — a scenario that predicted would be worth less, because nothing in it could be checked.

Keeping a run

Save run stores the assumptions you held, not the implications they produced — so reopening it re-runs the template against today's records under the same conditions. If the template has since been retired, the saved row says so.

Collect takes the records a run engaged into a collection. Timeline puts them in date order. To brief sends the run — with its assumptions stated — into the Brief Builder. Export writes it out with its citations.

The rules that bind both instruments are public: see the Professional methodology.

Next: Brief Builder — turning any of this into something somebody else can check.