PSDA.5:4.4 - Distinguish exploration from a live commitment option

Keep a promising but unresolved proposal available for inquiry without presenting it as an admissible commitment. A short annotation is enough: “comparison-ready within these conditions”, “requires this qualification”, or “excluded for this stated reason”. These phrases describe the present use; they create no new universal status system.

Inspect an adequate existing specialist result before requesting more. Preserve useful directions and the exact limit on a stronger claim. A decision-changing cross-practice gap becomes a feasibility, allocation, transfer, security, or other request only when A.15.9 selects its obtainable contribution against the whole acquisition burden through C.11.DUA. A missing result may block one branch while others remain useful.

Use C.17 when a claim about novelty, diversity, or usefulness of the named candidates needs characterization. Use C.18 when open-ended generation, archive, or front stewardship is actually needed. Neither characterization nor archive membership chooses the decision alternative. Use C.19 only for an actual live-pool policy question; thin evidence alone supplies no default exploration policy.