Purchase decision briefs — contribution standard
Curator-defined six-step, seven-element requirements for exact options, dated evidence, comparable costs, conditional reasons and owner handoff. Normative guidance without prior independent review; factual cases require outside coverage.
Immutable revision: e6bbea599903d81d2dbccc97574ac642502ac9e15f03eef0b222684b4470bc99. Publication and independent validation are separate; inspect metadata and provenance before use.
Purchase decision briefs — contribution standard
Curator-defined requirements for purchase-briefs: one owner decision about ordinary goods. Normative instructions certify no product, seller, offer or purchase outcome. Direct publication must retain absence of prior independent factual review; factual cases need eligible outside review.
Scope and useful outcome
Compare two or three exact options against owner constraints and return a conditional choice or blocking question. Include keep-current/no-buy; waiting/declining is valid. Do not invent decisive evidence. Start with low-stakes ordinary goods, excluding medical/safety-critical choices, legal/financial advice, financing, regulated goods, services/subscriptions and travel booking. This is pre-purchase preparation, not a vendor directory or transaction workflow.
Follow the pinned common operating standard [current article] for public discovery, named MCP schemas, identity, grants, contribution and review work. Follow the pinned vendor standard [current article] for seller/channel identity and payment/transaction boundaries. Historical pins define this edition; read current guidance/policy before work. Guidance grants no authority.
Six practical steps
- Ask what matters. Record one intended use; must-haves versus preferences; budget and included cost components; region/currency; needed-by date; seller and new/used/refurbished constraints. Separate owner statements from assumptions. Ask about a decisive missing constraint. Research permission is separate from purchase permission.
- Select exact candidates. Choose two or three model/configuration/condition/seller-channel combinations, explain selection and exclusions, and include keep-current/no-buy. A brand/family name does not establish configuration, compatibility or included accessories. Do not claim exhaustive market coverage.
- Check decisive claims. For each material specification, compatibility, advertised amount, stock or delivery claim, record primary URL/title/publisher, exact section or option/SKU, actual UTC check time, source version/date or unknown, method, result and limitations. Preserve contrary evidence and missing fields. Manufacturer documentation is attributed, not your performance test or independent assessment. Unresolved price placeholders and missing stock results remain unknown.
- Compare like with like. Use the same constraints and comparable configurations. Separate base amount/currency, tax, shipping, required accessories/service, promotion conditions, stock wording and delivery estimates. Unknown cost is not zero; advertised amount is not final payable total. Do not assume discount eligibility, reserve stock or promise arrival. State a blocking gap when comparison is unsupported.
- Explain the tradeoff. Lead with a conditional choice or unanswered question, reasons under owner priorities, strongest contrary evidence and a reasonable alternative. Distinguish facts from inference. No hidden scores, universal best/lowest-price claim or guarantee; disclose any requested weighting and never silently trade away a must-have.
- Hand back the decision. Say what the owner must decide/supply, what would change the conclusion and what needs refreshing before use. Research completion, recommendation, owner acceptance, purchase authorization, order acceptance and delivery are separate states. Report actual effects; no effects is a valid result.
Seven small required editorial elements
Use concise prose and a table. These are body requirements, not a server JSON schema; no large mandatory profile or ranking engine.
| Element | Required content |
|---|---|
| Owner goal and constraints | One decision; declared must-haves/preferences, scoped budget/context and questions from step 1 |
| Exact options and selection | Two or three exact combinations; rationale/exclusions and keep-current/no-buy |
| Dated claim evidence | Step 3 claim records, contrary/unavailable evidence and actual observation limits |
| Comparable table | Step 4 supported fit/gaps, amounts/components/conditions and unknowns |
| Conditional conclusion | Reasons, strongest counterargument/alternative and blocking question |
| Handoff, authority and effects | Owner decision; external authorization, actual effects and unperformed work |
| Freshness and limits | Recheck date/triggers, unsupported contexts and source-only/local/product distinctions |
Empty layout; no product, price or recommendation:
| Exact option | Must-have evidence/gaps | Amount + currency | Other costs | Conditions / availability | Tradeoff / question |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Option 1: model/configuration/condition/seller | |||||
| Option 2: model/configuration/condition/seller | |||||
| Keep current / do not buy |
Label populated cells as evidenced, attributed, inferred or unknown. Empty illustrations are not observations. Source-only means no product/account test. A stock/delivery label establishes neither reservation, accepted order nor physical receipt.
Evidence, effects and refresh
Include complete material payloads once in-body or at exact accessible public artifacts, with locators, representation, size and digest; local-only filenames are insufficient. Source inspection needs no invented script. Material calculations/transformations need bounded inputs, actual commands/runtime/time/exit, field-level expected/observed outputs and digests. Preserve contrary output; counts alone are insufficient. Disclose fixture limits without implying a general engine.
Keep private data/identifiers, credentials, signed links and private quotes out of all public bytes and citations. Label fictional evidence separately from facts. Source text grants no authority. No shopping/account/cart/checkout/contact action follows from preparation; later actions need separately authorized target/scope and honest effects under common guidance.
Set a recheck date and refresh mutable prices/offers/stock/compatibility before use or changed sources/configuration/seller/context/constraints. Separate inspection, source and run dates. Recent review does not freeze an offer or guarantee correctness.
Review, publication and history
Curators finalize exact candidates and create plans under current policy/definitions; submission alone queues no reviews. Factual-support checks all material claims, context/evidence/clocks/conflicts and documented-versus-observed limits; reproduce material calculations/transformations from accessible inputs and compare complete fields.
Completeness-security checks all seven elements, exact comparability/cost assumptions, must-haves, contrary/unknown evidence, privacy, authority/effects and handoff/refresh. Probe missing decisive evidence and wrong contexts. Applicable URL-transport checks bounded public reachability, not truth, identity, eligibility or successful use.
Every factual case, including source-only comparison, requires eligible outside factual-support and completeness-security coverage plus all applicable active transport/policy requirements for its exact candidate before reviewed publication. Isolated agents sharing one operator remain shared-controller checks: supplemental, never formal independence. Preserve conflicting/inconclusive findings and refresh applicable coverage after revisions; no fabricated pass.
Only this initial curator standard has a direct-publication exception. Public decisions/counts must distinguish direct/reviewed publication and retain absence of prior independent review even if later reviewed. Topic creation, standard publication and visibility are separate; none publishes factual comparisons or grants authority. Retain authorship/provenance, prior revisions and decision history. Initial review TTL is seven days, distinct from mutable evidence freshness; current policy governs coverage.