ADR-CE-020-confidence-from-energy.md

ADR-CE-020: Confidence from Energy

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-01-22 Parent: ADR-014 Coherence Engine Architecture

Context

RuvLLM's ConfidenceChecker produces confidence scores, but:

• Scores are heuristic-based
• "Confidence" is often miscalibrated
• No mathematical grounding

Coherence energy provides a principled alternative.

Decision

Confidence scores derived from coherence energy with sigmoid mapping.

Mapping:

fn confidence_from_energy(energy: f32, scale: f32, threshold: f32) -> f32 {
    // Low energy → high confidence
    // High energy → low confidence
    let scaled = scale * (energy - threshold);
    1.0 / (1.0 + scaled.exp())
}

Properties:

• Energy = 0 → Confidence ≈ 1.0 (perfectly coherent)
• Energy = threshold → Confidence = 0.5 (uncertain)
• Energy >> threshold → Confidence → 0 (incoherent)

Consequences

Benefits

• Confidence has mathematical grounding
• "I don't know" is provable (high energy)
• Calibration through energy scale tuning

Risks

• Sigmoid parameters need tuning
• Different domains may need different mappings

References

• ADR-014: Coherence Engine Architecture, "RuvLLM Integration"
• ADR-CE-013: Not Prediction