Not every number in your store deserves the same trust. A cost your supplier confirmed last week and a cost estimated from category averages are different kinds of fact — and an agent that treats them the same will eventually price something below cost. So every cost figure in Magistry carries a confidence tier, and actions gate on it.
The three tiers
- Tier A — verified. The cost came from Shopify cost_per_item or a manual entry you made. It's a fact someone stands behind.
- Tier B — estimated. The cost comes from an AliExpress reverse-image match on the supplier listing. Useful for orientation, not something you'd price against.
- Tier C — unknown. No cost data at all.
What gates on the tier
The gate is narrow and hard: discount_test — the only price action — requires Tier A plus a margin floor. A discount will not fire on an estimated or unknown cost, full stop. The agent can propose it, and the proposal will sit in review with the tier named as the blocker, but the executor will not apply a price move against a cost nobody verified. Soft, reversible actions (copy rewrites, drafts) run at any tier, because being wrong there is cheap to undo.
Examples
- SKU with a Shopify cost_per_item of €12.40, selling at €39 — Tier A. Discount tests and every other action available.
- SKU whose cost is estimated at €11–13 from an AliExpress reverse-image match — Tier B. Copy and lifecycle moves run; a proposed discount waits for a verified cost.
- SKU imported last week with no cost data anywhere — Tier C. The agent observes, flags it as an orphan, and touches nothing margin-sensitive.
Raising a tier
Raising a product's tier means one thing: importing or confirming its real cost. There's no override toggle, and that's deliberate — the fix for low confidence is better data, not a checkbox that pretends the confidence exists. Import costs from Shopify or CSV on the Costs page and the tier updates as the data lands.
The tier on a decision row records the confidence the agent actually had at the moment it acted — not what became known later.