The First Decision and managed AI

The First Decision is the managed research workflow included with a free Motriz account: one product question, researched on Motriz's managed AI, returned as an evidence-backed call you can act on. It needs no provider configuration and no payment method — it is how a brand-new account reaches a real, cited decision before anything else is set up. This page covers what it produces, exactly what you send, how quotes and receipts work, and what happens when the monthly allowance runs out.

What a First Decision produces

A run turns your question into one durable research artifact:

• The call — one of Build, Reshape, Test, Pause, or Stop, each shown with a one-line meaning so the word never stands alone (Pause, for example: "Park it — the timing or evidence isn't there yet.").
• Framing — the problem and audience restated in plain language.
• Findings with verified citations — numbered findings, each citing its sources. Citations are checked against the sources the run actually fetched; a finding whose sources cannot be verified is dropped rather than shown.
• Counter-evidence and coverage gaps — what disconfirms or weakens the findings, what stays uncertain, and where the evidence is thin.
• Explicit assumptions — the assumptions the call rests on, including the ones you stated yourself.
• One next test — the single most informative thing to do next.
• Confidence — high, medium, or low, required to reflect the counter-evidence honestly.

The call is a recommendation, never a recorded decision. Like a checkpoint scorecard, it is advice — what enters your product journey is decided by you, through the proposals below.

Where it runs

Start it from Motriz Cloud right after creating your account — before the desktop app is even installed. The launcher asks what decision you are trying to make, where you are starting from (optional), and which assumptions and evidence you already hold. A First Decision runs inside a product journey; the free account allows one active journey product. You can also start a First Decision from the current question on that product's desktop Journey. Browser-created jobs and artifacts remain in Motriz Cloud; desktop-created jobs are mirrored into the local product. Motriz does not silently import a browser artifact into the desktop's local journey.

Exactly what you send

A First Decision sends only what you type into the launcher, and nothing it discovers on its own:

• your question;
• where you are starting from, if you filled it in;
• each assumption you listed;
• each evidence summary you chose to include.

When you start one from the desktop app, the review step lists every one of those lines before anything is sent and states the exclusion plainly: "Nothing else leaves this Mac — no files, no repository contents, no conversation history." The managed-job contract is closed on the server side too: local paths, repository contents, provider credentials, connector tokens, and records you did not select can never be part of a managed request. See Privacy and safety for the full boundary.

Quote first, receipt after

Managed work draws from the Motriz Compute included with your plan — 50 Motriz Compute per month on the free account.

• Before the run, you request a quote. It shows the maximum Motriz Compute the run may draw; a run never settles above its quote. Quotes expire, and an expired quote simply needs refreshing.
• After the run, a receipt records what was actually used, stage by stage: the route, provider, and model, token counts, managed searches, and the exact allowance draw. Receipts and the remaining allowance live on the Plan & usage page in Motriz Cloud.
• Only successful work settles. A failed run releases its reservation — failed retries and internal overruns do not draw from your allowance.
• One managed job runs at a time on the free account. A second start is refused until the active job finishes or is cancelled; it is not silently queued.
• The allowance resets monthly. Unused compute does not roll over, and there are no top-ups or overage charges.

Proposals: you accept every update

When the run belongs to a product journey, the finished artifact proposes updates instead of applying them: an evidence entry, an assumption to track, and the recommended decision with its next test. Each proposal shows an explicit Accept or Reject — nothing updates automatically. In Motriz Cloud, that choice is recorded on the artifact; it does not create a local desktop Journey record. For a First Decision started from the desktop, accepting proposals writes the corresponding records into that device's local journey, and accepting the next test adds it as a journey note.

Retention, export, and deletion

Managed research artifacts on the free account are kept for 30 days; the period applied to your account is shown in Settings → Your cloud data. Account export includes research artifacts and managed-usage receipts, and account deletion removes managed jobs and artifacts along with the rest of your cloud records — the details are in Privacy and safety. Export a Cloud artifact before it expires if you need to retain its full content. Records explicitly accepted from a desktop-created artifact remain in that device's local journey, but they are not a backup of the expiring Cloud artifact.

When the allowance runs out

Managed work is metered and can stop for the month. Everything else continues: the workspace, your local products and repositories, and the providers you connect yourself — BYOK carries no Motriz markup and never consumes the managed allowance. Managed work resumes when the allowance resets.

What managed AI does not do

• It never uploads your repositories, Build state, conversations, or provider credentials — signing in is identity, not sync.
• It is not hosted Build, repository sync, or collaboration; those are not part of the free account.
• It does not promise a business outcome. It promises cited evidence, honest counter-evidence, and a call you can defend — including Stop.