The Promotion Criteria: Five Gates Between Simulation and Live
The promotion gate (SIM-1) is the boundary; the promotion criteria are the five checks that define it. Each gate is a verifiable pass condition, and a model that clears all five carries a promotion receipt that the audit layer can verify. The criteria are the operational contract of the simulation layer: what “tested” means, in terms the whole organization can check.
Gate one: coherence
The world must be self-consistent (SIM-3): temporal, logical, and statistical invariants hold across runs. The coherence score is part of the receipt. A model that cannot hold its world together cannot be trusted with a real one.
Gate two: fidelity budget
The simulation must be honest about what it does not model (SIM-8). The fidelity budget names the assumptions — which customers were approximated, which costs were flat, which dynamics were omitted — and the gate passes only when the budget is declared and the omitted dynamics are not load-bearing for the decision.
Gate three: behavioral parity
The agents in the sandbox must behave like the agents intended for live. Parity is measured on the same metrics the live system will use — the one real metric of the canary (SIM-5). If the sandbox agents and the live agents are not the same kind of thing, the simulation is theater.
Gate four: economic balance
The simulated ledger must balance (SIM-2, SIM-4): revenue covers cost, tiers hold, churn stays inside the model’s envelope. The economic gate is where most business models die in the sandbox — which is the sandbox working.
Gate five: canary
The model earns a bounded live pilot with a defined envelope and a defined rollback (SIM-5). The canary is the last gate because it is the first real world: everything before it is simulation, everything after it is deployment. The receipt for gate five is the canary report — and the canary report is what the business series (EX) turns into a case study.
Grounded in the SIM series (SIM-1, SIM-3, SIM-5, SIM-8), the S7 audit-layer work, and the EX worked examples. Seventh article in the Round D simulation track.
