An investigation is allowed a small vocabulary and no more. Relevance, direction and grounding are three independent axes, recorded in three separate fields, because a filing can obviously bear on an assumption while saying nothing about which way it cuts, and a system that collapses them into one confident answer will be wrong in the most expensive direction.
Does the document bear on this assumption at all? A claim about topic, not about direction, and it is the only thing many filings support.
A separate question, asked only of relevant documents. Neutral is a real finding. It bears on the assumption and moves it neither way. Uncertain is the honest answer, and the fallback whenever a direction cannot be established.
Supports and contradicts each require a span located in the verified document text. Without one the direction is refused and recorded as uncertain, not down-weighted.
Kept on three axes, “relevant, but direction unknown” stays sayable. A model that says “contradicts” and cannot point at the sentence has produced an opinion wearing a citation's clothes, and it is refused rather than recorded.
Contrary search runs on every conclusion. A conclusion reached without one is capped at low confidence no matter how much support it accumulated. Citation validity solves fabrication; it does nothing about selective reading, which is the failure that actually happens.
Source quality, corroboration, contrary weight, coverage and recency are combined deterministically. Arithmetic, permissions, entitlements and the record itself are computed in code, models read and reason; they never compute a number or grant access.
There is no apply step in the agent. An agent may say an assumption looks weakened; only a person changes what the institution believes. The record names both parties, and keeps them in separate records, permanently.
Attached to the proposal: the documents read, the spans located, the contrary search that ran, the confidence and how it was computed, the budget consumed, and the agent identity that produced it.
The person, the session, the timestamp, and the evidence that was in front of them at that moment. Reading a proposal and changing what the firm believes are different privileges, checked separately.