The Engine
Evidentiary Systems Framework
ESF is the analytical engine at the center of Salty Consulting. It structures and disciplines certain investigations. It is not the commercial deliverable — the expertise required to construct a case-specific recipe and operate it against a real problem is.
Public documentation establishes methodological credibility without publishing proprietary operational material necessary to independently reproduce or operate the engine. Substantive sections below are shells awaiting Version 1.0 documentation.
01What ESF is
The Evidentiary Systems Framework is a proprietary methodology for structuring investigations of messy, contested, evidence-heavy problems. It provides disciplined ways to formulate questions, define evidentiary requirements, design case-specific recipes, and produce auditable investigative records.
Full formal definition, scope statement, and positioning relative to adjacent methods will be inserted here for ESF Version 1.0.
02Kinds of questions it is designed to examine
ESF is built for problems where the decision question itself may be contested, the evidence universe is incomplete or adversarial, and claims outrun support.
Typology of suitable and unsuitable question classes for ESF Version 1.0 will be documented here. Do not invent categories.
03Underlying principles
Authoritative statement of ESF Version 1.0 principles will be inserted here.
04Primitives
Named primitives, definitions, and relationships for ESF Version 1.0. Proprietary operational detail may be summarized at a public-safe level only.
05Architecture
High-level architectural description of how ESF components relate. Diagrams and technical internals deferred until authorized for public release.
06Evidentiary discipline
How ESF Version 1.0 requires evidence to be sourced, classified, weighed, and recorded.
07Treatment of assumptions
How assumptions are identified, surfaced, tested, and carried forward (or rejected) within an ESF investigation.
08Treatment of missing evidence
How gaps are logged, whether absence is informative, and how missing material constrains findings.
09Treatment of conflicting evidence
How conflicts between sources or accounts are structured, compared, and reported without false resolution.
10Distinction between evidence and inference
ESF Version 1.0 rules for separating observed material from derived claims, and for marking the chain between them.
11Boundaries and limitations
What ESF does not do, domains where it is inappropriate, and explicit non-guarantees. Claims require support — including claims about the framework.
12Version history
Revision notes, rationale for lock, and future versioning policy will be recorded here.
ESF · VERSION 1.0 · LOCKED · DOC ESF-001