Honest numbers

Morse would rather tell you it doesn’t know than show you a number it made up. Once you learn to read its silences, the whole product becomes more trustworthy — an empty cell is information, not a gap. Three conventions carry this.

An em-dash means “nothing measured” — not zero

Where a value was never captured, Morse shows an em-dash (—), never $0 or 0. The distinction is deliberate and pervasive: a missing value shows the dash; a real zero is a real number.

So “cost: —” means we have no priced cost for this run, which is a very different thing from “this run was free.” Reading the dash as zero is the one misread the convention exists to prevent.

Gate lines say why a panel is empty

When a panel can’t show a verdict yet, it doesn’t blank out — it tells you the reason, in words. You will see lines like:

“Not instrumented — no LLM span data for this agent in this window.”
“Insufficient data. Need at least 50 traces in each arm before a memory verdict.”
“No fleet infrastructure cost yet — hosted-only workloads won’t show a fleet here, and we never fabricate a number when there’s nothing to measure.”

A gate line distinguishes the two reasons a panel might be quiet: not instrumented (the data was never sent) versus insufficient data (it’s coming, but there isn’t enough yet to be honest). The account lifecycle is what decides which one you see.

Estimates are walled out of the totals

Every cost is tagged with a provenance: provider-billed (provider_reported: exact, from the provider’s own billing), estimated, or unpriced. Only spans that are actually priced contribute to a trace’s total — unpriced spans are counted for a coverage score but never summed into the number you budget against.

Infrastructure estimates get the same treatment: an estimated per-trace infra share is stamped estimated and must never be summed into the priced total or into any cost-per-confirmed-outcome denominator. Estimated and exact never mix in the headline figure; approximations surface separately, clearly labeled.

This is what makes the Coverage Score meaningful: it tells you how much of your spend is exact versus estimated, so you know exactly how far to trust the total — instead of taking one blended number on faith.

Every coverage figure names its kind

“Coverage” is four different measurements, and Morse never puts them under one word or combines them. Each figure names its kind and its denominator:

Outcome coverage — runs that have an outcome from any source, out of all runs: “Outcome coverage: 840 of 1,200 runs have an outcome (70%).” It says nothing about whether answers were checked.
Scoring coverage — runs that were scored by a check, out of all runs. It says nothing about whether the work succeeded for the business.
Pricing coverage — model calls that have a known price, out of all model calls. Spend on unpriced calls is not in the total.
Customer attribution coverage — runs attributed to a customer, out of all runs. Unattributed runs are left out of per-customer figures.

A basis line sits beside each headline

A word like Healthy is easy to misread, so the screens put what it rests on next to it:

Healthy service targets state the target and the measured fact — “Healthy: 96.1% of runs with a reported outcome succeeded against a 95% target over the last 30 days.”
Quality is healthy states its scoring coverage and that it is “sampled answer checks, not whether customer jobs were completed.”
Condition met on a decision says whether it was a linked-work event (a pull request merged) or a measured result — neither shows the change worked.
CI gate ready says “Recorded outputs are re-scored; readiness is not test power.”
A scorer’s pass rate shows its chain: eligible → sampled → completed → counted.
A budget says Observe-only: does not stop spending.
Cost per outcome says whether it is counted per record (ticket, order, PR) or per run, and what was left out.
Revenue − traced AI cost names what it leaves out, including spend that was never traced.

There is no single health score: Morse reports each measurement on its own.

Where Morse withholds a verdict

The same rule — say so rather than guess — appears as named states across the product:

Baseline forming — an agent without enough history stays neutral. The gate line explains the evidence it needs. As an agent verdict it means 20 or more labeled runs, but on fewer than four different days. See Lifecycle.
“—” instead of $0 — cost per confirmed outcome shows a dash until at least five outcomes are confirmed. See Cost.
Not enough labeled outcomes — fewer than 20 labeled runs: the weekly brief and the Agents list withhold the success rate and verdict while showing coverage. Unlabeled runs are not failures. See Dashboard.
We can’t make a useful comparison yet — a regression or prompt comparison below its required sample says what is missing and what to do next; the statistics stay in a collapsed details section. The comparison corrects for testing many scorers at once. See Regression.
Claim withheld — an investigation’s claim that fails its evidence check is withheld with the reason, and an outcome claim needs an agreed success definition with enough outcomes reported. See Investigations.
n/a — scorers needing context or a span tree cannot score a frozen input/output replay. Missing scores are not fabricated. Review your policy’s readiness before relying on a build gate. See CI Gate.
Needs review — a completed investigation without a high-confidence, nonempty hypothesis needs a human check. The confidence is the model’s self-assessment, not a calibrated probability or a verified cause. See Investigations.

Cost Intelligence — where provenance and the Coverage Score are surfaced.
Lifecycle — why a panel says “insufficient data” and when that clears.
Data model — priced vs unpriced spans, by type.