Decision gates

Decision gates are checkpoints built into your Z2X Path where you stop, review the evidence collected so far, and decide how to proceed.

What they are

A decision gate is a special step in your plan (marked with a 🔷 diamond icon) that evaluates the evidence from all preceding steps and asks: should we continue, pivot, or stop?

Decision gates prevent founders from building past the point where the evidence says "this won't work." They're the most important steps in your plan.

The three outcomes

When you reach a decision gate, an agent synthesises all evidence collected so far and recommends one of three outcomes:

✅ Continue

The evidence supports moving forward. Key signals are positive: people have the problem, they're underserved by existing solutions, and at least some indication they'd pay.

↩️ Pivot

Something material has changed. Maybe the target customer turned out to be wrong, or the pricing model doesn't work. The recommendation is to adjust one or more key assumptions and re-run validation from an earlier step.

⛔ Stop

The evidence doesn't support continuing. This might mean the problem isn't real, the market is too small, or the timing is wrong. Stopping is not failure — it's the system working. Better to find out now than after building.

Reviewing a decision gate

1. Open the decision gate step in your plan
2. Click Run decision gate — the agent reads all evidence collected in previous steps
3. Wait for the analysis (typically 30–60 seconds)
4. Read the recommendation in the output panel

The output includes:

• Summary of evidence — what the agents found
• Evidence quality score — how confident the system is in the recommendation (based on the strength and quantity of signals)
• Recommendation — Continue, Pivot, or Stop with explanation
• If Pivot: what to change — specific assumptions to revisit and which steps to re-run

You always decide

The decision gate recommends. You decide. You can:

• Accept the recommendation and follow it
• Override Continue even if the agent recommends Pivot
• Reject a Stop recommendation and push forward

Z2X records your decision and the evidence score at the time. This creates an honest record of why you made the choices you made.

The evidence ledger

Every agent run that produces data adds to the evidence ledger for your idea. The evidence ledger is what decision gates read. You can view it directly in the Evidence section of your idea — it shows every signal collected, its source, and its quality rating.

You can also add evidence manually: go to the Evidence section and click Add evidence item. This is useful when you've had conversations with potential customers outside the platform.

What makes good evidence

Decision gates are only as good as the evidence fed into them. Strong evidence includes:

• Direct quotes from potential customers confirming the problem
• Screenshot of someone paying for an inferior solution
• A waitlist signup from a real person
• A customer saying "yes, I'd pay $X for that"

Weak evidence includes:

• "I think people have this problem"
• Generic market size statistics
• Survey responses from friends

Z2X labels evidence by type and source. Agents are instructed to seek primary evidence (direct contact with the market) over secondary evidence (research reports).