Consequence Links: connecting AI to dollars

A consequence link is the edge between a decision and the financial event that decision caused. Links carry four fields that make the attribution actionable: which pair they connect, how strong the attribution is, how the attribution was established, and what kind of financial impact it represents. Without links, a revenue event is just revenue. With a link pointing at a decision, that revenue is attributable to an agent with a provenance trail you can show to a skeptic — or an auditor. The ledger records both automatic links created by the attribution engine and manual links created by a human confirming a suggestion on the dashboard. The attribution_method field records which — so you always know whether a number came from a machine score or a human judgment.

Shape

{
  "id": "lnk_...",
  "org_id": "o_...",
  "decision_id": "d5e7a3b0-...",
  "financial_event_id": "fev_abc",
  "correlation_strength": 0.91,
  "attribution_method": "ml_inferred",
  "link_type": "revenue",
  "notes": "attribution engine: score=0.91",
  "created_at": "2026-04-16T12:40:00.000000Z",
  "deleted_at": null
}

Creating a link from code

# ``decision_id`` is a UUID string — use whichever variable your
# caller exposes (``receipt["decision_id"]`` from ``log_decision``
# in non-batched mode, or a stored id from a prior write).
pq.link_outcome(
    "d5e7a3b0-0000-0000-0000-000000000001",
    "fev_abc",
    correlation_strength=1.0,
    link_type="revenue",
    notes="direct cause — pricing API response produced this charge",
)

await pq.linkOutcome(
  'd5e7a3b0-0000-0000-0000-000000000001',
  'fev_abc',
  {
    correlationStrength: 1.0,
    linkType: 'revenue',
    notes: 'direct cause — pricing API response produced this charge',
  },
);

When you create a link via the SDK with a known decision_id and financial_event_id, set correlation_strength: 1.0 and let the attribution_method default to direct. Reserve lower correlation values for cases where you know the relationship is partial.

Attribution methods

Method	Who creates it	How the engine decides
`manual`	Human via the dashboard	Reviewed and confirmed by a person
`direct`	SDK, passing a known id	Explicit caller-supplied link
`temporal`	Correlation worker	Time proximity and metadata overlap
`ml_inferred`	Attribution engine (auto)	Composite score at or above auto-link threshold
`ml_suggested`	Attribution engine (review)	Score in the suggested band — awaits confirmation

The engine’s scoring combines temporal decay, Jaccard metadata overlap, a Bayesian agent-pattern prior, and amount plausibility. Links with a score in the ml_suggested band appear in the dashboard review queue rather than being applied automatically.

Confirming or rejecting ML-suggested links

When the attribution engine surfaces a suggested link, you confirm or reject it from the Links tab in the dashboard. Confirming promotes the attribution_method to manual and makes the link active. Rejecting soft-deletes the link — it is excluded from P&L queries but remains in forensic exports so an external reviewer can see the prior suggestion was retracted.

Soft-deleted links are never hard-deleted. The audit trail is always intact, even after a rejection.

Link types

revenue

The decision drove positive revenue — a successful upsell, a completed checkout.

cost

The decision drove a cost you would not otherwise have incurred — extra API calls, ops labour.

liability

The decision created legal or compliance exposure — an erroneous claim denial, a regulated miscommunication.

neutral

Attribution matters for the audit trail but the dollar sign is zero — for example, a canceled transaction.

The sign of a link’s contribution to the P&L comes from the linked event’s amount field, not from the link_type. The type is metadata for filtering and reporting, not an arithmetic override. A revenue link to a negative-amount event will subtract from the revenue total.

LIABILITY and NEUTRAL link types are excluded from the revenue and cost sums in the AI P&L — liability flows into the exposure column only, and neutral links are audit metadata with no P&L effect.

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Consequence Links: connecting AI to dollars

Shape

Creating a link from code

Attribution methods

Confirming or rejecting ML-suggested links

Link types

revenue

cost

liability

neutral

​Shape

​Creating a link from code

​Attribution methods

​Confirming or rejecting ML-suggested links

​Link types

revenue

cost

liability

neutral

Shape

Creating a link from code

Attribution methods

Confirming or rejecting ML-suggested links

Link types