Decision Criteria

Criteria are the lenses through which you evaluate your options. Instead of rating options with a single, vague "overall" score, PrioMind breaks evaluation down into specific, well-defined criteria — each focusing on a different aspect of your decision.

This approach removes guesswork and makes ratings more precise, more comparable, and ultimately more useful.

SOURC·E®

PrioMind ships with a default criteria set called SOURC·E® — a balanced framework designed to work across a wide range of decisions, from hiring to investments to strategy:

• S — Strategy contribution: How well does this option align with your overarching goals? Does it move you closer to where you want to be?
• O — Opportunity and potential: What doors does this option open? What upside does it carry beyond the immediate decision?
• U — Urgency: Is there a time factor? Would delaying this option cost you something — a market window, a deadline, a competitive edge?
• R — Risk mitigation: What risks does this option address or introduce? How well does it protect against downside scenarios?
• C — Capability fit: Do you have the skills, resources, and capacity to execute on this option? Is it realistic given your current constraints?
• E — Evaluation confidence: How confident are you in your own assessment? This is a meta criterion — it doesn't rate the option itself, but the quality of your rating.

SOURC·E® uses a triangular sequence with values 1, 3, and 6 for low, medium, and high ratings. This simple scale ensures that high ratings carry disproportionate weight, making strong signals stand out.

SOURC·E® IS AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE

Whether you're on a free Butterfly plan or a paid Swarm subscription, SOURC·E® is available out of the box. No setup needed.

Meta Criteria

Meta criteria are a special type of criterion that rate your rating rather than the option itself. Think of them as a built-in quality check.

In the SOURC·E® set, Evaluation confidence is the meta criterion. At a high level, it:

• Amplifies ratings when confidence is high (you know what you're talking about → your assessment counts more)
• Dampens ratings when confidence is low (you're guessing → your assessment is tempered)

This addresses a common problem in group decisions: not everyone has the same level of expertise on every option. Evaluation confidence ensures that informed assessments carry more weight than gut feelings.

For a detailed look at how meta criteria affect scoring, see meta criteria in the ratings section.

Criteria Sets

Teams on a Swarm or Colony subscription can create custom criteria sets tailored to their specific decision-making needs. This is useful when your team repeatedly makes the same type of decision and SOURC·E® doesn't quite fit.

For example, a product team might create a criteria set with "User Impact," "Engineering Effort," "Revenue Potential," and "Strategic Alignment" — criteria that map directly to how they evaluate feature requests.

Custom criteria sets are managed at the team level and available to all decisions within that team.

WHEN TO USE CUSTOM CRITERIA

Start with SOURC·E®. It's more versatile than it looks. Only create custom criteria when you find yourself repeatedly wishing for a different evaluation lens. Premature customization can make comparisons across decisions harder.