The decision workspace

What the decision workspace is

The decision workspace is what opens when you click Take Action, or open any decision card, anywhere on the platform. It is the one place where a decision is carried from "here is what I found and what it's worth" through to "here is what I did and whether it moved the number."

It is not a Margin-only surface. The same workspace opens from a decision card on Margin, from the Feed, from Decisions, and from every other section. You can act in /margin, /feed, or /decisions; the action plan is always executed in this one workspace, so a decision has a single home no matter where you first saw it.

Verinode surfaces the decision and recommends how to act on it. You decide, and you act. Nothing here is done on your behalf without your go-ahead.

Moving between decisions

When you open a decision from a list, say, all the pending decisions on a section, the overlay knows the set you came from. The header shows a "3 of 12" counter, and you can step through the whole set with the floating ‹ › arrows, the left/right arrow keys, or a swipe on touch. Each decision's full detail loads as you land on it, so a long list stays fast.

Reading the decision: the top of the workspace

The header restates what you are looking at:

• A status pill, Pending, Acted, Parked, Ignored, or Resolved, with the domain (Vendor, Carrier, Team, Billing, and so on) and the entity the decision is about.
• The dollar impact, top right, with a small tag reading Calculated or Estimated, and where the number is grounded, Peer cohort or Industry baseline. A one-time figure and an annual figure are labeled as such.
• Detected and Acted dates, so you can see how long a decision has been open.
• A quiet copper line, "Calls like this have paid off for you before.", when decisions of this kind have measurably worked for you in the past.

Below the header sits the Verinode Synthesis. This is the reasoning: a short, plain-language read, written to you as your Co-COO, that weaves the originating signal, where you sit against peers, the dollars at stake, and the shape of the plan into one paragraph. It is the "why this, why now" before any of the steps.

Your position and the alternatives

When the decision is backed by a benchmark, a Your Position section shows your value beside the peer average, the gap as a percentage (or your percentile), and, where the data supports it, a distribution bar marking P25 · Median · P75 with your own position on it. It carries the honest context beneath: how many peers the comparison rests on, the rough monthly savings on the table, and the consequence if nothing changes.

For vendor and product decisions, an Alternatives row shows the options with their Verinode score, so a "should I switch" decision has the candidates right there.

Act, Not now, and Ignore

Three buttons drive the decision:

1. 1Act, you commit to working the decision. Your assistant reviews the underlying data and drafts a concrete, multi-step plan. The decision flips to Acted, and the plan appears below.
2. 2Not now, you park the decision. It leaves your active list without being lost; Verinode can raise it again later if it grows.
3. 3Ignore, you dismiss the decision. It moves to Ignored. Honored out loud, Verinode won't quietly keep nagging you about the same thing.

When there is no plan yet, a fourth option, Mark as handled, lets you record an outcome for a decision you took care of on your own, without working through a drafted plan.

After you press Act, a short "Preparing your plan…" state shows while IQ drafts the steps, you can keep working and you'll be notified when it's ready. If a draft doesn't finish, the same panel offers Regenerate rather than spinning forever.

The action plan

Once the plan is ready, you'll see "Your plan is ready" with an Execute Plan button. Executing starts the timeline, every step's due date counts from that day.

The plan is a list of steps. Each step carries:

• A status, Queued, In progress, Waiting, Blocked, Done, Skipped, or Obviated.
• An owner, you, or someone on your team if you assign it.
• A concrete description and, where it helps, a short list of things to watch for.
• A due date and a quiet cost-of-delay read, so the order to work the steps is obvious.

Click a step to expand it and see its attached artifacts, the actual thing you need to act, ready to use, not a description of it:

• an email draft you can open in your mail app or copy;
• a call script or talking points for a conversation you need to have;
• a checklist for a task with several parts;
• a survey you can send to a vendor, your team, or a carrier in a click;
• a self-audit you run yourself to check where you stand;
• a memo, the leadership-team walkthrough for a meeting.

You mark steps done, skip them, reassign them, or ask IQ to revise the plan directly from the panel. When every step is finished, a prompt invites you to close the project and record what happened.

Save to SOP

Once you've completed one or more steps, a Save to SOP action appears (also shown in the footer as "Save these steps to my SOP"). It promotes the completed steps into a draft standard operating procedure, so a decision you worked once becomes a repeatable process. IQ surfaces a confirmation card before anything lands in your library, nothing is written to your SOPs without your sign-off. This is how a good decision stops being a one-off and turns into the way your business runs.

What peers did, and the research behind it

Below the plan, two panels answer adjacent questions. Peer Decision Path shows what operators in the same situation actually did and whether it worked, the network's experience, anonymized. Related Research links the reports, benchmarks, and alternatives that back the recommended action. Both hide themselves when there isn't genuine coverage for this decision yet.

Outcome: did it work?

Every acted decision carries an Outcome section that moves through three states:

• Executing, steps are still open; the outcome starts tracking once the work is done.
• Measuring results, the work is finished but not yet verified. You record whether it Worked, was Mixed, is Too soon to tell, or Didn't work, with an optional dollar figure and a note. IQ may propose evidence for you to confirm.
• Verified, the decision is resolved, showing the confirmed outcome and the impact you realized.

Recording the outcome is what closes the loop. It resolves the decision, and, anonymized, it teaches the network which plays actually pay off, which is what keeps the recommendations honest over time.

The footer

At the bottom you'll find a link back to Decisions, the Save these steps to my SOP action, a Send test reminder link (to preview the reminder email a live plan would send you), and the date the plan was prepared. A collapsed Activity disclosure holds the full audit trail of everything that happened on this decision, for when you want to retrace it.

Related

• The Feed and decisions, where decisions first surface before you open the workspace.
• Understanding your margin, the section decisions most often act on.

Data sources