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JevConfidenceGate

A reusable routing policy: a universal confidence floor, plus per-action thresholds for actions that cost more when they are wrong.

What it does

The answer says what; confidence says whether to act on it unattended. This turns that into three decisions:

Decision Meaning
EXECUTE confident enough for this action — act on it
CONFIRM above the floor but short of what this action demands — ask the user first
ESCALATE below the floor — nobody should act on this automatically

Quick Start

JevConfidenceGate gate = JevConfidenceGate.builder()
    .floor(0.60d)
    .require("transfer_funds", 0.85d)
    .build();

switch (gate.decide(response.choice("intent"))) {
    case EXECUTE  -> perform(intent);
    case CONFIRM  -> askTheUserToConfirm(intent);
    case ESCALATE -> handOverToAHuman();
}

decide(ChoiceAnswer) uses the selected label as the action name. decide(String, double) takes them separately, for when the action is not simply the label:

String action = untroubled ? "auto_close" : "route_to_" + department;
gate.decide(action, response.choice("department").confidence());

Builder Configuration

Builder method Type Default Description
floor(double) double 0.6 The confidence below which every action escalates.
require(String, double) — — Demand more for one action than the floor asks of the rest.

build() rejects an action demanding less than the floor — such an action could never be reached, so it is a configuration mistake rather than a preference.

Why a class rather than an if

Two reasons. The asymmetry between actions is policy, and policy is easier to review, test and change when it lives in one place than when it is spread across call sites. And the floor is a genuinely separate idea from the per-action requirement: it is the line below which the question did not decide, regardless of what you were going to do with the answer.

From the ticket triage demo:

department   : technical (confidence 0.44)
=> route_to_technical: too uncertain to act on, sent to a person

A Stripe integration failure is genuinely both a billing and a technical matter. The confidence lands at 0.44, below the floor, and the gate sends it to a person rather than guessing — while the other tickets in the same run clear the floor and are handled automatically.

See Also